partial background? ... see through text?

Two questions:

1) I don't know how to explain what I'm asking about, and I don't know the terminology which is why i've been having trouble knowing where to look it up in the memories, but I've seen it done before. Anyhoo, I basically would like to know how to have something similar to this



anyhoo, the point is, i want to know how to get like, invisibility on part of the background and stuff... gah i hope i make sense :-/

2) if you look at like the text above where her entry box goes (under these tears...), you can see that the text is sort of see through. She did it without changing the opacity Im pretty sure, because the black outline is still as dark as it should be at 100. How does she manage to change the inside then?