Gradient Masking Tutorial (by Vered)

NOTE: This tutorial was made using Photoshop 7, but should be easily adapted for older versions of Photoshop. Also, you must understand layers in Photoshop.

The purpose of this tutorial is to create a gradual fade of an image into white by combining a gradient and a mask.

1. start with a white background.

2. Add the image you would like to fade as a new layer:

3. Go to the "layer" menu, and then choose "add layer mask" and then "reveal all". You will see in the layer palette that the mask was added alongside the image layer:

4. You will also note that as long as you click on the layer mask in the layers palette, the colours in the tools panel will turn into black and white:

5. Next you need to choose the "gradient tool" from the tool panel. If you can't see the gradient tool, go to the "paint bucket tool" and click the tiny arrow on the low right corner of the button. A small menu will open, and you will be able to choose the gradient tool.

6. Make sure that the gradient colours are black and white and that the gradient type is like in the following image (the gradient tool properties are in the top bar):

7. Now, once again make sure that you have selected the layer mask of your image layer from your layer palette. Remember that in masking, everything you paint in black disappears. Now start from the botoom part of your image, hold the keyboard's "shift" key down, and with your mouse draw a straight line towards the center of the image, then let go of the shift key and the mouse. This should result in the following (please note the layer mask in the layer palette):

8. Based on the above we can now create various gradient masks. For instance, you can draw that straight line all the way up and even beyond the image limits to fade the image out more - again, note the layer mask in the layer palette:

9. Or you can use a different type of gradient, like the rounded one. Here it helps to reverse the gradient and that way where you draw the gradient (in this case, just on SMG's face) you draw with white, leaving just SMG's face clear. Note the layer mask in the layer palette.

These are the basics - you can use all the gradient types and you can also change the amount of black and white within the gradient itself if you want to.

Enjoy!

Tutorial by Vered