Thanks James, I can see that cheetah rug coming in handy for future shots lol.

For the fade I just took the olliptical marquee tool in Photoshop, set it to a pretty high feather (depending on the size of the image), then drug it so each side of the ellipse touches each side of the image. Then hit "select-inverse", then copy and pasted it.

Then I just lightened it with "image-adjustment-hue/saturation". I like to use that because I like control over the saturation as I lighten or darken.

I'm sure there are other ways to do it but that's the one I adopted! If any of the faded, white part covers and fogs part of the subject, I will also taket he same elliptical tool and circle the part I want restored and delete from the pasted, lighter layer.