How do I gradually fade an image?

[PLCT01]

All I want to do is fade an image so that it's more transparent at the top than the bottom. Have spent all morning trying to find something in the manual! Thanks!

[Tim Morrison]

The best way is to use a mask. Mask layers control the transparency of the underlying layer.
Open your image and go to Layers > Mask Layer > Show All. If you look in your Layers palette, you'll see that the mask layer is shown as solid white. Mask layers are greyscale layers... the pixels on them can be black, white or any shade of grey. Black areas will turn the underlying image fully transparent, white areas will be fully opaque and shades of grey will be degrees of transparent.
Because you want your image to be transparent at the top, the mask needs to be black at the top. You can do this by flood filling the mask with a black-white gradient. To do this, double click on the foreground material in the Materials palette. Click the "Gradient" tab, then click the sample. Choose the "Black-white" gradient. This will probably appear with white at the top. If so, change the angle to 180 degrees. With the Flood Fill tool, left click on the image. You should now have an image that is fully opaque at the bottom, fading to fully transparent at the top.
You can adjust where the fade starts and the width of the transition using the Levels filter (Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Levels). Drag the black, white and grey diamond shaped markers.
I find that it is best to use the Pick tool first. Drag the bottom edge upwards to set the start of the fade, then use the grey diamond in the Levels filter to adjust the rate of fade.
Once this done you will need to save to a format that supports transparency. PSPIMAGE is best. PNG would be OK too.

[df]

I found dragging the diamond shaped sliders of the gradients to be rather cumbersome as you couldn't really see what part of the image the fading was appearing on. I do this
http://www.flickr.com/groups/tutorial_c ... 610522598/

If you work with a 16 bit image (Image > Increase Color Depth > RGB 16 bits/channel) then the gradient (fade) will be much smoother.

[LeviFiction]

He didn't say edit the gradient and move the triangles in the gradient editor.

He said use the Levels command and move the diamonds in that. Since it's working on a mask layer (greyscale image) the levels command will help to edit the gradient by effecting the grey areas, and you can watch the effect on the image as you edit it.

[df]

He didn't say edit the gradient and move the triangles in the gradient editor.

He said use the Levels command and move the diamonds in that. Since it's working on a mask layer (greyscale image) the levels command will help to edit the gradient by effecting the grey areas, and you can watch the effect on the image as you edit it.

I guess I should have read the full post. I knew there was another way to do that but never found one.

[Trev Bowden]

I prefer to do the adjustments in Histogram adjustments as you can also alter the contrast To make it a quick change from Black to white Or a more gradual change.
So many ways.

[PLCT01]

Thanks for all your help. It works!