In response to a question in the Digital Photography forum, I am posting a link to a Layer Masks tutorial I wrote a while back.  This was originally a series of posts on DPReview's Retouching forum.  For convenience it is linked here as a PDF file.

I am certainly open to further tips or suggestions.  And your feedback or questions are welcomed as well.

Enjoy! 

 Just a little introduction?

Looks like a lot more than that! Nice job!

Dave

Very nice job, thank you.

I have a couple of suggestions for v.2.

Instead of copy / paste, use "duplicate". Might not be a big deal for small test files, but as you work on larger images you'll want to avoid copying large amounts of data to RAM.

For adjustment layers, the automatic layer mask is an option (on by default). So if you create an adjustment layer and don't get a mask, check the layers palette options and turn on "Use Default Masks on Adjustments"

 Thanks for taking the time to put this together.  Layer masks are one of those things that seem like some sort of far-out concept until you use them and realize their usefulness.

 Joel

I'm not that good at PS but I learned a lot from that tutorial

thank you

scraplesspress:

Very nice job, thank you.

I have a couple of suggestions for v.2.

Instead of copy / paste, use "duplicate". Might not be a big deal for small test files, but as you work on larger images you'll want to avoid copying large amounts of data to RAM.

For adjustment layers, the automatic layer mask is an option (on by default). So if you create an adjustment layer and don't get a mask, check the layers palette options and turn on "Use Default Masks on Adjustments"

I doubt there will be a version 2, but thanks for the comment and suggestions.

Janderson:

 Thanks for taking the time to put this together.  Layer masks are one of those things that seem like some sort of far-out concept until you use them and realize their usefulness.

 Joel

You're welcome!  I felt exactly the same way before it clicked for me.  I just knew it was something useful, but I couldn't quite grasp it.

Philippe:

I'm not that good at PS but I learned a lot from that tutorial

thank you

Hey, we were all there at some point.  Just glad I could help.