Photoshop - how to change the opacity of selected parts of an image.

EmilyD

Hi,
I'm a bit green when it comes to Photoshop so I was hoping someone might be able to give me a bit of a breakdown on how to go about this. I'm trying to design my wedding invites and I want to insert an image beneath the text with reduced opacity. I know how to do this, however, I want to leave certain parts of the image at full opacity - they include a kind of bubble pattern all over the image along with a signpost. So I basically need to know how to select these so that they're at fully opacity, while the rest of the image is reduced!? Any help would be greatly appreciated because I've been trawling through sites for hours now and to no avail...
Thanks in advance

Kenny Logins

With the image layer highlighted, click on the layer mask button (bottom of the layers panel), fill it with black, and then with a soft brush paint white areas to restore the image (or flip it; white to black to remove areas of the image).

The image mask works from black (0% opacity) to white (100% opacity).

Scotty #

A simpler way may be to copy the image layer. Then reduce the opacity of the lower layer. Then with the higher layer still at full opacity, delete the parts you don't want (using a soft edge brush).