Blending one picture into the next

I'm kinda lost... I *think* I followed your instructions, but the whole left side of my banner whited out totally when I did what you advised. When I tried from the other side, it whited out all the right side of my banner.

Also, I don't kno what you mean by this:

"In your case that'll mean seeing the obscured ad-copy underneath, so I'd put a rectangle of blue underneath to keep it regular."

...I don't have any ad-copy at all on my banner... it's just pictures.

Anyway, do you think you could just go and do that quick change for me, and just upload the new PNG ? Or is that maybe asking too much?

Thanks
   Shawn

I can do that if you like, but I'd sooner see the resolution played out here so others can benefit.

When I said 'ad copy', I just meant the blurb on the right end of the lower layer which is obscured by the picture of the ship. It's not visible in the actual banner.

Re the whiting-out, it appears like either you have not set the opacity to 0% on the gradient, or you have not linked the mask to the layer. Or possibly both. A mask of any kind should not put any new colour into the image.

I did slightly mess-up my instructions: It's probably best to setup the gradient tool first, because the appearance in the dialog is a bit confusing when you are already in masking mode (sort of like transparent, to dark, to transparent) if you follow the above in order (sorry!).

If you want to be sure of getting this right, start by ensuring 'Linear' is selected in the property inspector before you open the gradient settings (this is the default anyway unless you've already been playing with it).
Then, in the Presets dropdown, select Black/White. That gives you the starting point to set it as I described above.

Once that's done, then add the mask. A word about that: it should be the 'cruise ship' image (not actually a 'layer' in Layers Panel terms, as both images are in one layer) that you select. When you click Add Mask, an icon like the button should appear next to it, and a second (blank) thumbnail should appear with a chain icon. A yellow border round the mask's thumbnail means you are working on the mask - if that is not what you see, click on that thumbnail to activate it again.

I know this procedure (like many in Fireworks) isn't very intuitive, but once you've cracked it it's very handy! Please let me know if any of my wording is unclear.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong - I'm still getting the same results as last time. It whites-out everything to the left of where I click-drag the paintbucket. This is really weird.

See, I followed the Fireworks built-in tutorial the other day and it did a little bit of masking. It first "merged-down" 2 bitmaps into one before it did the masking... so that's what I did first too - I merged-down the cruise-ship picture, with the rest of the main banner to the left to make only one bitmap... then I tried following your instructions. I don't know if that's why I'm having this trouble or not.
   The "ad-copy" you mention is the stuff that I'm trying to block out with the image of the cruise ship - I don't want that stuff there at all.

Anyway, I guess I'm asking you now if you can just do this for me... :-)
I'd *like* to be able to know how to do it myself, but it just doesn't seem to make any sense.

Thanks
   Shawn

Ah. Yes, unfortunately once you have the two images merged together, the operation we're discussing is no longer possible. I see you still have the original PNG on your server, so follow my instructions using that file.

Yep, that's what did it!

I've got it working now!

Thanks
   Shawn