Rather basic, but hopefully a few will find it helpful. http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/masks.htm And as always, every new tutorial posted, means an update to my news page, which is vanilla http://www.poopinmymouth.com
The more of these types of tutors the better. I often forget newer artists are blind to the basic steps we have been using for years. Pull out enough of these, and you'll be ready to publish a book, poop.
The benefit of this is that I can paint on the layer, and it will always stay circular. Normally I would have to reselect the circle area, or erase afterwards to keep the layer as a circle. Um, you do know about the lock transparency button, right? You can just select a circle and fill it then select "lock transparency"…
Masks are always your friend. It's very very rare that I'll even use a layer in photoshop without it having a mask. I thought I was proficient in photoshop, but I didn't even know about the tilde key showing the masked parts in red. I guess the old saying still holds true: "you learn something new every day".
Ben rocks! I always tell people that using Photoshop is all about the selection... Ben, you should include a note about QuickMask, which lets you switch a regular marquee/live selection into a 'temporary alpha' mode that you can paint on. It would just go along to explain how PS's masking tech has many forms, but they all…