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How to Make Pictures Translucent Looking

Translucence is an optical property which refers to the passage of diffused light through a material. In digital pictures, translucence can make the image appear brighter and less dense. Increased translucence has a number of corrective purposes in a photo, such as brightening shadows, muting distracting colors and reducing tonal contrast. To create the appearance of translucence, the image's opacity, or the amount of light withheld, must be reduced using image editing software.

Things You'll Need

Image editing software

Instructions

- 1
  Open the picture using your preferred image editing software. Most image editing programs, including those bundled with your computer's operating system, will offer opacity adjustment as a standard feature.
- 2
  Select "Window" from the software's top toolbar and click "Layers" to open up the adjustment palette. A single layer, named "Background" will appear in the main window of the palette.
- 3
  Right-click the "Background" layer and select "Layer from Background." Click "OK" in the window that appears to create the new layer, which will appear as "Layer 0."
- 4
  Locate the "Opacity" adjustment slider in the top right corner of the "Layers" palette. Click and drag the slider arrow to the left to reduce the opacity and thus increase the translucence of the image.
- 5
  Adjust the slider arrow until you achieve the desired level of translucence.
- 6
  Select "Layers" from the top toolbar. Click "Flatten Image" to finalize your adjustment.
- 7
  Save the image. To preserve the original file, rename the image before saving it.

Photography