I have Photodeluxe and Photoshop. In an old program I used to have, when you cropped a picture, it asked you if you wanted a "soft" edge or a "hard" edge. I can't find anything like that anymore. I want the edges of my photograph to fade off. Nothing I try works. When my programs talk about "edges" they mean the lines of the image, not the borders of the picture.

Any suggestions?

Make a Marque selection same as you would use the crop tool to surround the area of your image that you want cropped. Go Select, Feather, try 10, go Image, Crop. Undo and find the soft edge feathering that you like.

In Photoshop, choose a selection tool (like the rectangular or eliptical marquee). In the Option bar near the top of the image, find the box called Feather. Enter a value, make your selection, then crop, or invert the selection and hit the backspace key to delete the inverse of your selection. The amount of feathering will depend on the resolution of your image.
Regards, Murray