By learning how to use overlays, picture use becomes on of those less scary things, giving you more confidence with them and allowing you to start the path to reaching your full potential with them.
Let's begin with what an overlay is...
An overlay is any picture that is used to add atmosphere or invoke a particular mood on a map, in most cases they are lighting effects however other effects like fog, clouds, rain, etc. can be used.
Here are 2 examples, these are very standard overlays, yet they can be used to great effect.
The way they work is based on how transparent you make the picture.
The lower the transparency, the less faded the picture looks on the screen, 50% transparency is usually the recommended setting to start off with.
You can choose to get a little bit technical and give the top half of the picture a different transparency to the bottom, but it cannot be used to very good effect.
As the example above shows, even the slightest change in transparency can make it look fairly bad.
In terms of how overlays go, that's all there is to them, in most cases they are 320x240 pixel images so there's no need to worry about displaying them at any desired coordinates since [160,120] is the default, but if the need ever comes up, it's more or less a case of trial and error.
This concludes the overlay tutorial, best of luck to all who use it.
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