Fading edges tutorial....

[loady]

I saw a link in the gimp section on how to fade edges of a photo and i am failing trying to do it with photoshop. This is what i am trying to do, i am making a disc label from a high res scan, i have my circular disc background, i then copied from the scan the title with the rectangular selection tool and pasted it into label image, the edges of this title show out even though the background label is same in colour, i want to soften the edges or feather them so that you cant see the rectangular shape of the layer.....i dont know what the technical term for this would be so i cant find a tutorial for an dummy like me to follow...if anyone knows how to do it or a link to a dummies guide for doing it i would be eternally greatful.

Thank you.
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[johncap]

Can you extract the title and just paste it with a transparent background? There are a fewa ways to do that if the the title is realtively distinct from it's background. It's much more effective than trying toblend backgrounds together.

OR, you might try just embossing the paste in and kind of make a placard out of it. As my mom always said about clothing, sometimes it's better to intentionnaly look unmatched than to try and match and have it look bad. It was in reference to trying to match black pants and jacket that aren't the same fabric. It usually doesn't look good.
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[loady]

Well i just drag the selected title from the cover straight to the piece i am working on....the embossing sounds like a good idea though,, i will deffo give that a go. Thanks joncap.
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[Seiji]

Why not just download Gimp?

Doesn't hurt to use more than one program.

[loady]

i did, but i seem to have some of the menu items missing or named as other things and it is a quite cumbersome front end i found.
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[Anonymous]

Stick to Photoshop (I'm assuming you're using CS), it's pretty much the best graphic design tool out there, but thats not to say other programs aren't useful.

Why don't you just take that rectangular image that you want to fade, make sure it has it's own layer, and just use the eraser tool. Play with the brush settings (on the top panel there will be a drop-down once you've selected the eraser tool). Try and make the diameter and hardness whatever you think would be sufficient.

The hardness determines how much it fades from the middle - 100% meaning that it's a solid brush, 0% meaning a total fade from the center.

Everyone knows Ctrl+Z is Undo in most programs, including Photoshop, but this helps especially well when doing erasures and airbrushing by hand:

Ctrl+Alt+Z will do the same as Ctrl+Z, but you can do it multiple times (as many times as your History will allow). Even if you don't end up using it here, it's definitely something that comes in handy.

Good Luck with the cover!