By Corrie Haffly
"I need an ad for the company home page advertising our spring sale," your supervisor says.
"Can you turn it around in the next hour?"
"The next hour?" you reply. "Just give me five minutes!"
The next thing you know, you're getting a raise in the time that it takes you to make a layer mask.One of the best Photoshop tools to have in your arsenal is an understanding of how to use Layer Masks to "fade" pictures (a thre e-minut e browsing session on your favorite Websites will show that lots of people use this effect). Not only do es the effect look professional, it's quick to achieve. Within seconds, you'll have a sharp-looking image for your Website... and you might even impress a few supervisors while you're at it! Who would pass up an opportunity like that?

In this article, we'll show you two ways to use Layer Masks to fade pictures. As you learn how to use Layer Masks, you'll also pick up other skills in Photoshop:

* Get images into a Photoshop document
* Work with layers
* Use the gradient, brush, and move tools
* Resize images and layers

Eager to get started? Open Photoshop, find a few graphic files that you'd like to work with, and let's go! The Basic Fade
First, let's look at creating a basic fade effect that will result in an image like this:

Open your original photo in Photoshop.

Since this tulip photo was from my digital camera, it was a whopping 1920x2560 pixels. If your image is a lot bigger than the size of the final Web image that you want to create, click on "Image," then select "Image Size," and specify a new width and height for your image. I resized my image to a workable 300x400 pixels.

This will add a layer mask, which you can see as a linked rectangle next to the picture.

Click once on the layer mask to make sure that you're "on" it, so that you don't accidentally paint your picture black! Then, click at the bottom of the picture, hold the mouse, and drag the mouse straight up. You can hold the shift key while you drag to "force" the cursor to move in a straight line. Move the cursor up to about where you want the fade to "end," and let go.

And there you have it -- your first beautiful fade using a layer mask!

Click once on the picture in the Layers Palette so that you can be sure you'r e working with the picture itself, not the layer mask. Then, choose the Move tool (or simply use the keyboard shortcut and type "v").

Click somewhere within the document, hold the mouse button down, and drag your mouse to move the layer around. I moved the tulip up to fill most of the picture. Note that this step can only really happen if your picture is actually larger than the canvas size. Recall that the pasted-in picture was 300x400 pixels wide, while our actual document canvas size is 200x300 pixels.

Finally, add the text, select "save the picture for Web," and email it to your supervisor.

Here's an extra tip. What if you want the image to blend into a site that has a different background color? The answer is simple -- use the paint bucket to fill in the Background layer with your desired color. Another beautiful aspect of layer masks is tha t they change the actual transparency of parts of the image, so you can overlay the picture on any background! The picture below shows the colored Background layer, and our perfectly fading tulip and ad copy.

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