Rectangle with opaque border and semi-translucent area

[Chamster]

I'm very often at the following scenario. The task is to create images for a guide document. I'm opening a screen-shot of a web page and I'm supposed to highlight some areas. This input box in red, that button group in blue etc. Later in the text, I refer to them as "the blue marked item", "the yellow area" etc.

 

Now, I do that in several steps, by copying, creating layers, setting up the opaqueness, merging, correcting, swearing and so on. Not convenient at all.

 

So, my question is twosome.

1. Is there (or can one create easily) a tool that marks an area with color X so that the border is opaque and the area is semi-translucent?
2. Is there a smoother way of achieving that (especially if I'd like the created marking areas to be resizable after the save?

[Ishi]

Let me clarify this.

 

What you want to happen is to mark an area of your screenshot with a box that has a semi-translucent color (can see through the bottom) with an opaque border?

 

 

What I did was simply, add a new layer, set my primary color to red and secondary color to a semi-transparent red. I then drew a rectangle with the Draw Filled Shape With Outline option.

 

 

  

 

 

You can create a box like this on one transparent layer, then delete the white Background layer, crop it that it almost fits the edges of the canvas. Save it as a .pdn file.

 

 

And once you're editing images you want to put this box highlight on, just go to Layers from the Menu bar and Import from File then browse to the .pdn file your created that has the semi-transparent box. It should import it there and it should be resizable plus re-usable anytime.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2014 by Ishi