Adobe Photoshop

#1 (permalink)

i'm new to photoshop so before i ask my question can you folks make your replies as if you were telling a rather simple 8 year old

i have a nice pic of a beach with palm trees and the likes. now i want to fade away the edges to become whatever my background colour is. i guess this would be like a gradient or something but in reverse?? like a radial gradient maybe.
now i think i could just about do that but i want to have a wavey pattern to the gradient, like a dream perhaps, cloudy and blurred and not a perfect circle like the radial gradient would give.

ohh yeah, to make it a bit harder for ya i only have elements 2.x so none of that action stuff i keep hearing about.

you can probably tell from my description of my problem that i'm neither very technical or artistic.

thanks folks

;p

#2 (permalink)

I'm assuming you can do this in elements, if not we'll go another route.. Let me know if i need to clarify anything..

Assuming you have the picture in a separate layer above the background...

1) Open the canvas up to fullscreen, so you have a lot of grey around the picture, you may need to zoom out to do this

2) Select the eraser tool, and pick the largest feathered brush you can

3) Select the layer with the Picture and in the gray area (not in the actual picture, outside of it) click and slowly move in towards the picture. You should see the edge start to disappear faintly, showing the background layer.

If too much disappears, use a smaller eraser brush. If not enough, move closer to the picture

Make sense?

#3 (permalink)

VitaminB: awesome, worked like a dream!

many thanks, you've prevented another head-scratch related bald spot.

#4 (permalink)

glad i could help!

i remember how frustrating photoshop can be when first starting out, anything else don't be afraid to ask!

#5 (permalink)

great, you might be sorry you offered.

slowly picking it up, some odd quirks are taking some time to get my head around.

thanks vitaminb