Transparency newbie question

AC
Posted By
Alex_Cougarman
Jul 26, 2007
Views
173
Replies
5
Status
Closed
Hi. I’m new to Photoshop CS3 but have used other graphics tools over the years (PhotoPaint). I have a photograph and would like to apply a transparency to it such that its opacity decreases gradually from one side of the picture to the other. I’ve not found the transparency tool in Photoshop and feel quite stupid about that! I know this is very simple to do, but have no clue how to do it. Thanks πŸ™‚

How to Improve Photoshop Performance

Learn how to optimize Photoshop for maximum speed, troubleshoot common issues, and keep your projects organized so that you can work faster than ever before!

EH
Ed_Hannigan
Jul 26, 2007
Use a Layer Mask with a gradient on it.
<http://www.sitepoint.com/article/photoshop-fade-layer-mask>
AC
Alex_Cougarman
Jul 26, 2007
Thanks, Ed.
T
thoughtstorms
Jul 27, 2007
There was a question much like this elsewhere in the forum, and the asker was new to digital imaging in general (i believe) so i wrote a detailed response, and then saw that his question was replied with "Please re-post your question in the main forum." So here i am looking for the question. Therefor, what follows MAY seem pedantic to a (fellow) PhotoPaint user. But it gets the job done, and maybe helps with a few tips.

Hope it helps:

What i do takes a few steps, but works beautifully.

Say you have a wide image and you want the left side transparent, fading to fully opaque on the right.

Type "M" for the marquee tool (i’ll throw in helpful shortcuts as i go) and select about half of the image. The Right half.

Now. You may not know much about the Quickmask mode. It is just a "place" you go to make changes to your slections, or masks. Type a "Q" to go in (and out) of Quick Mask Mode. You will see your image, and the right half will have a translucent (partly see-through) red colour over it. This is the area you selected with your Marquee tool.

Now. Go to Filters, (on the menu bar) then select blur, and then select "Gaussian Blur". For a smooth fade we want a high number. Depending on the size of your image (you should always try to work with a large image, you can shrink it at any time, but stretching it degrades the image badly!) anywhere fro [50] to [250] (which is the max. Try a number, type it in the "Radius" field in the Gaussian Blur window. Then hit enter on your keyboard (might have to hit it again) and it will blur your mask (AKA "selection"). What you want to see is fully red on the right, and no red at all (or very little if you want the image still SLIGHTly visible there) on the left. If it only blurred a little in the middle, you need a larger number. You don’t HAVE to undo (Ctrl+Z PC, Command+Z Mac) you can "re-blur" it. Keep going until you get a smoothe transition from nothing to red left to right. Then type Q again.

You may see "marching ants" (or "marquee lights") on your image.

You need to view the entire image, so hold down Ctrl and type a zero (on the top or number pad) to view the whole image (Command+0 Mac).

Now my best way – i hit Ctrl+C to copy (Command+C Mac) and immediately hit Ctrl+V to paste (Command+V Mac). Then, in the layer pallete – simply click the [Eye] icon next to the layer below this new one you made when you pasted the (left-fading) image. You should see checkerboard squares through the left part of the image. If not, you may have other layers below it. But that is a good way to do it!

Practise makes you better, and remember to save often, and sometimes save as the same filename with a number after it. That way you can always go back to how you started out – even if the power goes out or your computer freezes.

Hope this was helpful!
AC
Alex_Cougarman
Jul 27, 2007
Wow! Thanks, thoughtstorms. That is one detailed answer and is extremely useful for folks coming from PhotoPaint. The keyboard shortcuts come in quite handy, too πŸ™‚

You should create your own web site for folks who are coming from PhotoPaint to Photoshop with these kinds of tips. Great work. Your help (and the time it took to put the post together) is much appreciated πŸ™‚
T
thoughtstorms
Jul 27, 2007
Well…. i do need to get some of these handy hints down for my students… and maybe one day i can get all that on the web somewhere. I’ll be posting some step-by-step tutorials on PhotoshopTalent.com soon, same username.

In the mean time – one thing to NOT miss – is custom keyboard shortcuts!

PhotoPaint had that for decades, and it ROCKED and i’m not sure when Adobe smelled the coffe, but MOST of the tools and commands in PS can be given a custom keyboard shortcut. There a lot of standard ones you can’t change, and there are some tools and functions i just can’t get to work. (As of CS2, anyway.) Give that a go – you can make SOME of your familiar keystrokes from the Corel live on in PS.

I think i may go on a bit in a new topic about "PhotoPainter’s Welcome Wagon"… the transition is not easy, but i think finally it is worth doing, although i still use PhotoPaint and Paint Shop Pro, and Freehand (i almost wept when i learned Adobe had assimilated Macromedia. Snif.)

Have fun wrangling them thar pixels!

Β—keithΒ—

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer πŸ”₯πŸ”₯πŸ”₯

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections