Gradient Fading of Symbols

I am trying to create the "reflection" effect for symbols in
a presentation. I have accomplished flipping the image and changing
its alpha value to create the reflection illusion. However, I would
like to be able to fade the "reflection" as it gets further away
from the "true image". This way the reflection fades away the
further it gets from the native image.
Also, are there any good sites that describe how to do
relatively basic graphics effects for lower level users?

If you visit the following link, a method is described at the
beginning of the tutorial.
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play?id=32
The site has some fairly good tutorials that may work for
your latter request as well.

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