There may be times that you have a fantastic photo to use in a banner, and yet you do not want to chop it off to make room for type. However, if you place type on top of the photo, it becomes hard to read. It would be ideal to fade back the photo where you want type, but still maintaining 100% opacity of other portions of the pic.

Here is a picture of a tropical scene. It is the student file named "Sunset.jpg".

To fade the picture back would be simple using the Opacity slider in the Layers palette. But, this would mean the entire photo gets affected, not just certains portions. Here is how the photo would look using Opacity. Looks rather bland, doesn't it?

The example below is more of what we want. The photo starts out at 100% on its left side, and, starting from its middle point, gradually fades to 0% on the right. How do we achieve this gradual fade?

1. Easy. Use Photoshop to open the Student File "Sunset.jpg". Show the Layers palette. Create a new layer. Use the Selection tool to draw a selection beginning about the middle, extending to the far right side. Make sure the Foreground is set for black, and the Background for white in the Toolbox. 
 
 

2. Select the Gradient tool and drag its cursor from the left side of the selection to the far-right side. You will fill the selection with a black/white gradient.

The result will look like this:

3. In the Layers palette, click on the menu that says "Normal" and change this to "Screen."

4. The gradient will screen itself through the photo, fading its image as the gradient fades to nothing.

5. You may then add some type to see how well it reads on top of the faded section you created.

"Tip & Tricks by Dean Bagley" is copyright © 2001 by Dean Bagley. Dean writes and illustrates computer books on graphic design for the "Against The Clock" series published by Simon & Schuster/Prentice-Hall, NY. He also writes and illustrates his own line of children's stories about his cartoon character, Baggy Gator (www.baggygator.com).