MAMEWorld Forums - MAME Artwork: Official - Artwork ".lay" brightness question.

I Have an artwork ".lay" question.

First my conundrum:

By default MAME renders artwork (Bezels, Instruction Cards etc.) at full brightness. Meaning a white instruction card has the same value of white as the brightest on-screen game object.

I prefer the artwork to be darker than the on-screen graphics, to give the illusion that the game graphics (CRT) are glowing brighter than the surrounding artwork.

I've tried two ways of doing this:

1) Duplicate each piece of artwork as pure black. Then edit the .lay file to place it as a layer behind the proper artwork. Then "dim" the proper artwork using 50% alpha.

2) Darken the artwork files by 50% using PhotoShop.

Both methods work okay for me, but they are time consuming. Being a lazy fella, I'm wondering if there is a simpler way to do it?

Here is a before/after image for reference: https://imgur.com/gallery/9yCAGPM

[ATTACHED IMAGE - CLICK FOR FULL SIZE]