With InDesign CS3 came yet another useful tool that prevents the need to switch to Photoshop to alter an image you’re using in your page layout. It’s called Gradient Feather, and you can find it under the normal Gradient tool in the InDesign Tools panel. Of course adding transparency to your image directly in Adobe InDesign is nothing new. If you recall, InDesign CS2 offered a simple feather feature to your images, but in a limiting manner in which the feather applied to all sides of the image at once. Not very useful in my opinion. 
With CS3, we can now select the image in our layout with the direct selection tool, then select the Gradient Feather tool by either clicking and holding the Gradient tool in the Tools panel and selecting the Gradient Feather from the flyout menu, or simply hitting Shift + G. Now all you have to do is click and drag over your image as you would to apply a normal gradient and you’re good to go – see the quick results in the animated gif image to the right.
