Opacity

[Juc1]

Hey all,


Can anyone please take a look here. I want to add some text to the centre of the house image and in order to make this text more readable, I want to fade this central area of the image, maybe using opacity. So I created a mask = the outer area of the image is 100% opacity, while the inner area of the image is 20% opacity. But reducing the opacity seems to have the unwanted side effect of creating a grey film or box.

I want to say 'fade the selected area' but it seems that I am saying 'turn the selected area grey'. If I use say 50% opacity instead of 20%, the unwanted side effect is less strong but basically the same.

In the 'Marrakech' image, the face fades but there is no film. Maybe my problem is that my faded area layer needs some kind of layer beneath it but I am not sure what.

Any suggestions please?

Thank you

[Hoogle]

or you can just add a stroke to the text

[Juc1]

or you can just add a stroke to the text

OK thanks but the text will not be a layer in the psd - it will be html on a web page ie the idea is this image will be the background for the web page - the same image but numerous different texts.

[colleague]

you can add a layer with a white area that you blurred with "gaussian blur

house[1].psd