In photoshop, how do I fade the edges of a picture gradually away. I want to make the edges not so 'hard' when put on a web page with a white backgroud.
What is the proper term for this?
There is a fade command but I am obviously not using it correctly

 

If the images are rectangular then you can use the marque tool to do this, select the marque tool and set the feather option to 1 or 2 (depending what photoshop you are using it is under marque options in photoshop 5.5, I don't like 6!) then simply drag the marque around the pic, 'ctrl x' it and then 'ctrl v' back onto a white background. This is called antialias.

 

There may be a better way but I:

Paste my pic in a window with some white background around it. Crop my pic to the required size and then go to 'select' and 'feather'.

Next go to 'Select' and select 'Inverse' and press delete.

This should do the trick

Phil

 

Great stuff, thanks guys.