Blend Borders w/ Background (Feathering?)

[SKYflyer]

How can i blend the borders of the two hero portraits in my sig with the background color? So that the borders of the portraits fade into the background? Help thx! Also, is what i am trying to do called feathering? I have tried this command and with no success...

[eljaco]

Apply a layer mask (hide all) to the portrait layer and paint only the center of the portraits white with a soft brush (and make sure you paint on the mask, not the image). This is one way of doing it.

You could also try selecting the central part of a portrait, then feather the selection, then copy and paste it onto the background.

[LiquitySplit]

also try blending the images in "screen" mode.. it worked for me! i'm not sure about it thought, but in one case worked... so give it s hot... i might be wrong...

[Snowi]

take an image, press control and select the layer in the layer palet.
Go to:
select-> modify -> contract
and contract it by 4 pixels or something
then go to
select->feather
and feather it by 4 pixels or something, then press
control + shift + i
and press delete

Eljaco's way works fine too, tho its rarely used by "starters"

EDIT:I read your post finnaly,

Well ill explain what you are doing when you do it my way
First you contract your selection, that makes perfect sense no? you can see the dotted line got smaller
Feather is a very nice piece of software, it makes the selection "Fade" sort of speak, when you try what I said you'll see it for yourself. Kinda hard for me to explain since im not english, but you'll get what it does when you do my post