Can someone tell me how this effect was done?

[Joss Pittman]

I don't know if this is the right place to put this question. I'm brand new here but would love some feedback:

How did the artist do this effect with the image (circled in black). Seems like it might have been done with a brush, but I've been fooling around with brushes but haven't been able to repeat this effect to success. 

Anyone veterans know?

THANKS!

[firstdefence]

That will be a mask layer and either a soft brush used or a gradient fill from black to white on the mask like this.

Using a gradient.

Using a brush set to black

Faded person using a gradient on a mask.afphoto

[GarryP]

I know this question is tagged as one about Photo but another possibility, in Designer or Publisher, is to use the Transparency Tool as shown in my attached image – left ‘before’, middle ‘after’, right showing where the transparency gradient stops are.

(Just in case other people didn’t see the tag and didn’t know there were other options.)

[Joss Pittman]

6 hours ago, GarryP said:

I know this question is tagged as one about Photo but another possibility, in Designer or Publisher, is to use the Transparency Tool as shown in my attached image – left ‘before’, middle ‘after’, right showing where the transparency gradient stops are.

(Just in case other people didn’t see the tag and didn’t know there were other options.)

I want to be able to do an effect similar to the one I posted, but have it like a transparent gradient in Photo V2. Does V2 have something like this that you showed from Designer?

[Joss Pittman]

8 hours ago, firstdefence said:

That will be a mask layer and either a soft brush used or a gradient fill from black to white on the mask like this.

Using a gradient.

Using a brush set to black

Faded person using a gradient on a mask.afphoto

Thank you so much for the swift reply! How did you make the gradient and brush transparent? I just started using the software a week ago, so I appreciate your patience with my unlearned questions. THANK YOU AGAIN!

[firstdefence]

The black part of the gradient is transparent because it's been drawn on a mask layer. The saying is "White reveals, black conceals" so white will show the image and as the gradient fades to black the image will gradually be hidden, it will fade away.

If you want a white background underneath the transparency simply create a pixel layer and fill it with white or a colour of your choosing.