Here are the effects I know and how to do them. I'm looking for something better than this, which can add a transparent feather to images large and small, to be placed in print documents (with Publisher).

White Stroke Gauss Effect

(My name for the effect). Create a rectangle, no fill, white borders. Make the borders thick. Then add gausian blur to the borders. This creates an OUTER fade to white effect. That's not usefull if trying to blend an image into a background color.

General Gaussian Blur

Create a rectangle with gaussian blur applied, set to lighten color blend, with another rectangle of the background color underneath. This also is not transparency.

Is there any other way? Suppose I want to create a background image for pages, where there is a border which quickly fades into a non-white background color moving inward. Gausian blur doesn't really do this. Anyone have ideas on how to do it?