PHOTOSHOP - feathering an image
To feather an image:
1. Click on one of the marquee tool options (alternatively, you can use the magnetic lasso tool).
or 
2. Select the area to be feathered on your image with the
marquee tool
3. From the menu bar, choose Select > Feather (or,
you can right click on the selected area of the image and choose Feather).
4. Enter a Feather Radius value. The smaller the value, the less gradual/subtle the feathering will be.
At this point, you have several options . . .
Option 1 -
Drag the selected area to a new or previously created canvas by selecting the Move Tool.
(To create a new canvas area, choose File > New and choose dimensions that are big enough to accommodate the selection you’re going to copy there.)
Option 2 -
Make sure the Marquee Tool is selected. Right click on the selected area of your image and choose Select Inverse.
You should see the "dancing ants" all around the outside of your image now.
Next, choose a foreground color with the Set Foreground Color tool color picker (we'll use white in this example).
Right click on your image again; this time choose Fill.
You'll see a dialogue box; make sure Foreground Color is selected and then click OK.
Option 3
Right-click on the selected part of the image and choose Layer via Copy.
Look at your layers palette. You should now see that a new layer with the feathered selection has been added. To view the layer alone, click on the 'eye' icon next to the background image.
It should look something like this:
Here's another (somewhat better) example of a feathered image. I used the round marquee tool for this one, then I added text layers on top.
