please help me!! i want to make my text areas kind of transparent so i can still kind of see the image beneath it, but i want it to still have color! does nayone know how to do this? i know it can be done, i've seen it in other layouts.

What they probably did (which is the best option, IMO), is cut out a piece of the image that would appear in the text area, lighten it with a graphics program, then set it as the background for the text area.