Little help with basics plz

Hi guys,

Recently decided to teach myself howto use photoshop so i can so some baic graphics stuff like making forums signatures web desighn etc. Got myself a copy and found its not as easy as pick up and go ;p
Managed to work out a few things like making backgrounds using certain brushes etc but im having a few troubles which i will list below.



Here is my background and i want to place the writing you can see over the background without getting the wite pixels around the edge which you can see, id also like to make it look smooth and not too shabby, another thing if i wanted the writing to appear full black how would i do this.

Another thing im stuck on, ive managed to work out howto spearate images from background by deleting certain colours hte back contains but there certain types of images im having troubles with.



See this image, i ould like to be able to place the black image over my background with the white on outside and inside appearing transparent, also if i wanted this to fade into the background to give a sort of clear effect how would i do this. =) a lot of questions i nkow but im desperate for help

thanks for reading and hope you can reply

You may want to look up some tutorials on 'defridging' an image. There are different wants to get those pesky background pixels to not show up.

If you are using a b&w drawing and you want the white to go away (like above) you are in luck!! There is a simple method although you really should learn how to clean up your images.

Select the layer and change the layer to 'multiply'.
http://www.thepixelguy.com/temp/multiply.jpg

As for 'fading' and image, there a different ways to do that too but the easiest way is to just change the fill or opacity of the layer. (2nd attachment).
http://www.thepixelguy.com/temp/opacity.jpg

My guess is that the above imaged used both opacity and perhaps some masking to make the fade uneven.

Hope that helps.