Gray transparent layer to write text on

Hi

First off, thank you for reading this! Just so we know, I am using Photoshop 7.0 on Windows XP

I am pretty new with photoshop and I have been watching a lot of how to videos to learn some effects, but I have hit a wall when it comes to trying to pull off this one effect. In the end I would like to create an image file that will consist of a gray transparent rectangular box that I can freely write solid text on. I would like to take this image and "drop" it onto other pictures that I have so that it can serve as a description box. I would like whatever my picture is to be my background and then have this gray box file be the foreground so that I don't have to recreate this process for every image I want to add text to, I can instead edit my Transparent gray file with the text I want and then add it to the picture I want to have text.

So that is a rough idea as to what I want to do, here is a picture to help explain what I am looking for.

Create a new document.

In the layers palette, turn off the layer 'Background' if its there. You should now see a chequered grid on your canvas - this represents transparency.

Create a new layer (Layers > New > Layer or something like that). Rename the layer Grey.

Choose the grey you want to use and Fill this layer with the colour.

In your layers palette, bring the Opacity down to 50% (or whatever you want).

Now select the type tool and write what you want. Make sure it is above the Grey layer.

Voila. Put your image below your Grey layer and you are ready to go.

If you want to take this into Flash as per your example above, you should File > Save for Web and Devices and save as PNG-24. This will preserve your transparency.