photoshop 7

I have extracted a portion of a .jpg image, using the extract filter. The extracted portion has an irregular edge. In other words it is not rectangular, circular, square or any other precisely defined shape. It just has an irregular arbitrary curved edge which eventually comes around and connects to itself. Like someone tore it out of a square photo. The edge is very clearly defined however. Since this was done with the extract filter, the edge has a very small distance that gets faded to transparency. The question is: How do I fade or dissolve to transparency starting much further into the extracted drawing (a distance of my choice)? I don't necessarily mean with the extract filter, but any method, tool, or combination thereof. It does not necessarily have to be with an irregular shape either. I would like to be able to do this with any image. Thanks.

George Belva

Make your selection, go to Select > Feather. Pick a value, then either copy/paste your selection or invert the selection and delete the extra stuff. Play around with different values on the feather, and possibly with grow/shrinking the selection.

If you want to exclude the background, duplicate the extrated layer(layer 1) as layer 2, move it under layer 1, blur layer 2 to get the out-stretching 'shadow'.

If the shadow is too weak, duplicate layer 2 to layer 3 to strengthen it, it usually takes three or more blurred layers to make it.