Photoshop CS4 query - lowering opacity on certain aspects of an image

EmilyD

Hi,
I'm trying to do up a wedding invitation on my computer. I have a particular image that will be on the front of the invite in full colour, but on the back I want to lower the opacity so that I can type over it. However, the image is of a winding road covered with autumn leaves and I'd like to keep these in full cokour, while the opacity of the rest of the image is lowered. Can anyone give me a rough, synopsised guide to how to do this in Photoshop CS4. I've tried googling it but no joy. If anyone can help I'd be extremely grateful. Cheers.

Zillah

I'm a little unclear on exactly what you're looking for, but if I'm understanding you right, all you need to do is draw a selection around the bit you want to make transparent and drop the opacity. You'd want to put a rather large feather on the selection too.

5uspect

Google layer masks and figure out how they work for opacity. Essentially by painting various shades of gray on the mask you can control the opacity in the corresponding image.

As Zillah has said you can then use selections to select the objects you want to keep fully opaque but switch to the layer mask and paint on that instead. The Quick Selection Tool in CS4 should easily automatically select the leaves. This will help you have accurate selections when you paint opacity.

You will need a white layer below your image to show the effect obviously.

BlastedGlute

are you sure you mean opacity and not saturation?

Do you want to make the elemets black and white or see-through?