Transparent edges of a JPG

[ojr]

Hi guys,

I have a high quality but small jpg picture that I need to put onto my website, the background colour is blue.
I want to blur all 4 edges of the picture so when I put it on the website page the background shows through with a nice faded effect into full opacity of the picture in the centre of the image.
I'm sure its pretty straightforward, but I can't work it out. I played around with the marquee tool but couldn't delete the outer edges like I had hoped.
I'm pretty sure it will need to become a .png of .gif to show the transparency but I'm worried about the quality then too.

Could anyone please go through this step-by-step as I am a new user of PS.
(I'm using CS4 if that makes any difference)

Thanks!

 

[7Hunters]

This is actually fairly complicated. I would need to make you a video to walk you all the way through it but here is some help...

First step CTRL+A - should marquee everything

Under the 'SELECT' menu (top of Photoshop - has tons of options for any selection you make so this is really important menu with a lot of not too obvious feature.

SELECT > Modify

From modify you can choose Border and it usually defaults to having that blurred edge like you discussed.

I usually don't use border however - how I would do it is like...

well I'll write a tutorial or do a video for it sometime. PM me if you need extra help. Maybe I could make you a PSD file and you could see how I did it or something. Sorry not to be more helpful.

Cheers, Seven

 

[ojr]

7.... you ledgend!

Thanks sooo much - I got the perfect result I wanted.

1) opened the .jpg
2) double-clicked it to make it a layer
3) [cmd] + a
4) SELECT from top menu
5) >MODIFY
6) BORDER
7) 15px
8) press [Del]
9) Save image for web > as a 'png24'

Worked a treat, thanks again!

Olly

 

[7Hunters]

High Five!