BTW — yet another way to do this fade thing:
1. Create the type as a selection.
2. Fill with the desired color to transparent gradient.
Blend If CAN be edited in Elements, but holy-cow it is a production. Like I said Blend Mask is a good work-around, and you can adjust it so it works for any color or tone — just like Blend If.
Speaking of work-arounds…if you use Layer Masks (which you can get from the free tools on Adobe Studio <
http://share.studio.adobe.com/axBrowseSubmit.asp?d=164028&am p;dn=Richard+Lynch> ) You can do all sorts of things with masks to make them function like Blend If. For example:
1. Open an image (a frog or animal or something)
2. Select All
3. define a new pattern (Edit>define Pattern)
4. create a new layer
5. add a layer mask
6. fill the mask with the pattern (Edit>Fill>select the pattern just saved)
7. fill the layer (not the mask) with, say, blue.
8. Shut off the background view.
You should end up with a blue negative of the frog. Think about that one and you’ll come up with some rather interesting methods for targeting color application. For example, say you wanted to turn just the midtones blue…you could duplicate the image and create a gradient map that has 3 tabs: black on either end and a white tab in the middle. Then apply this to the duplicate image, create the pattern from that and use IT for the mask fill. Miraculously, only the midtiones will be filled with blue.
Advanced stuff, but certainly in the realm of the type of thing you’d want to accomplish with Blend If — and without reaching for anything but free tools.
That help?
Richard Lynch