How do you achieve this affect?

[damon2003]

Hi there a background image on this site:

http://www.csszengarden.com/

top left, it is here:

http://www.csszengarden.com/001/zen-bg.jpg

It looks like they have faded a square portion of this image and added a faded border. Can somebody please tell me how this is achieved with a image within Photoshop?

thanks a lot

[aj_nsc]

Quite simple.

Take any old picture, load it up as a new layer with the layer selected
Using the rectangular marquee tool, select an area of the photo, and cut it (ctrl+x)
Paste it back into the exact place that you cut it out of (ctrl+v)
Right click on the new layer you just created, click blending options, and add a "stroke" effect
Then, change the opacity of the layer down to about 20-40% (or until you think it looks good)

EDIT: This doesn't achieve the foreground-white gradient that you see from the top left corner to the bottom right, but you post didn't ask about that part....let me know if you want to know how to do that too.