Fading Effects
Fading effects are especially useful when you want more than one image on the project, or when text is used. For example, for an advertising poster for a musician, you may find it useful to fade a photograph of the musician into a background that provides a clear backdrop for text. That text, then, can provide information on the musician, for example, his next show or the critical acclaim he's received.
How to Add a Fade Effect
Fading effects are most often achieved in photo-editing software by adding a layer mask below the image for the image to fade into. To fade an image into another image, it can be useful to use a blur tool and simply blur the images together.
Shadow Effects
A shadow in physical space is the dark area or shape produced when something comes between rays of light and a surface. For photography, though, shadows can add drama or context to a setting. They can even reveal things that are not explicitly visible in an image. In black and white, shadows can have a powerful impact because a strong shadow can all but cause objects or figures to become invisible. Also, since shadows change depending on the position and strength of light, shadows can reveal intention in the use of light. Adding shadow behind text, too, can help by making text easier to read.
How to Add a Shadow Effect
To add shadow behind text, web designers can use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. To add a shadow with a drawing software, you can manually add the darker coloring according to your own desire. Alternatively, with digital photo-editing software, a basic way to add a shadow is to create another layer, copy the image that will have a shadow, rotate the copied image on the second layer and use a gradient tool to make the copied image darker.