Center grey-out with square transparency, why?

I have an image (CorelDRAW x5):

I want to make a feathered edge to it using the transparency tool. I pick square, change black to white and vice-versa and the best I can get looks like this:

I've lost all the contrast and color saturation. I want the feathering/transparency to only appear right at the edge.With the white anchor in the middle and the black at the edge of the image on the right , I have tried:

• making the center transparency anchor both white and transparent...center is still greyed out
• This with the intensity line all the way to the right...sliding ti left makes it worse
• Moving the right black transparency anchor to the right just moves the feather edge out of the image and the whole thing is grey

How do I make the transparency feathering just happen at the edge of the image.

Thanks in advance!