PHOTOSHOP: How do I crossfade? (1 Viewer)

Ok, i have seen the effect a million times in posters and ads- where an image is layed over a background- and instead of doing an extraction of the forground image- the edges just sorta gradually fade (the opacity of the forground layer is made more clear- just around the edges).


Like this poster, all the images were layed togther and made varying degrees of clear- but the edges are all faded out gradually...


Specifically what i'm trying to do is:
I have 2 textures that are very similar, but not exactly the same. If I but them up against one another, the transition will be very very obvious... however- if I could gradually fade them (i.e. they would overlap by several hundred pixels and if one could get gradually more clear from left to right, revealing the second texture underneath, i'd guess this would be very good for hiding the transition (just like a crossfade in audio).


I know photoshop does this, I see similar tricks done all the time, i just don't know what is the best way to do it. Essentially what i want it like a gradient, only instead of a color- i want to gradient the level of opacity - from completely solid to completely clear, over a strecth of a few hundred pixels.

-vince

You can do it two ways. You can manually use a soft erase tool (large brush) to erase the edges where you want it to fade into the next image, or you can use a gradient mask.

Basically you create a mask and fill it with a black to white gradient. I can't remember off hand which shows the image through, the white or the black. You can do some experimenting with that to get the effect you want.

Here is a tutorial on gradient masking. It is for the mac version but the pc version is basically the same. http://www.creativemac.com/2003/07_j...ient030723.htm

Vince,

Here are a couple of different ways that I'd do it:

Select the area in which you'd like to preserve the opacity, be it a circle, an oval, or a rectangle. Make sure you give it plenty of breathing room around the part you'd like at full opacity. Then inverse the selection, and feather it, for your needs, probably around 200 pixels (I think the max is 250). Once that is done, just hit delete. If it feathers too far into the area you want totally opaque, just go back and try it again, this time making your original selection bigger, or decreasing the amount of feathering to the selection.

Your other option, depending if you've got a graphic tablet, or if you're really steady with a mouse, is to just select a really big soft brush as an eraser (between 800 -1000 px), line up the center of the brush with where you want the fade out to completely end, and just erase it out manually. I would tend to go for this option, as it takes a little less guess work as to how it will come out.

A quick way to do it is to create a reveal selection layer mask and fill the mask with a black-to-white gradient. White pixels in the mask will reveal the underlying pixels of the layer, and black pixels will hide them.

Guys,

First off, thanks a ton for the tips. The wet eraser tip is a really good one-- although I don't necessarily need to erase in a circle in this case- rather from one edge to the other... but it's good to keep in mind.

I will check the tutorial and see if I can make it happen... the problem is I don't understand much of the making process (and if anyone want to take a stab, i'd love to know more). I'm not too literate on masks or paths.

Thanks

V