Another effective tutorial showing us how to create this great effect using an alpha mask in the channels pallet. Nick at www.2gen.net was kind enough to show me this tip last night, so Thanks You! to him for the tip and now ill show you how its done.
1. Grab your image and create a new document, mine is 565px wide.
2. Select your Channels pallet and create a new layer it will become an alpha layer
3. Now select the Gradient Tool and pick White to transparent.
...and Drag your Gradient In this direction
4. Open Filter/Pixelate/Halftone and apply these setting. (depending on size increase the Radius with larger images)
5. Press and Hold Ctrl and click on the Alpha 1 Thumbnail, this will highlight the selection.
6. Now Select RGB and then Go to Layers Pallet and select the layer you would like to effect and Cut.
Final Image ~ Proceed to next steps to create additional effect
Optional Steps:
7. Merge all layers and then duplicate the layer, Go to Effects/Blur/Gaussian Blur to about 2.0 and then set mode to Darker Color.
