Chapter 9. Masks and Extractions
Our communications with readers, students, and many graphic artists tells us that most Photoshop users don't use masks. It may be that masks seem complicated, or they may strike you as being more trouble than they're worth. It's quite likely that you've played with the basic selection tools — namely the marquee tools, the lassos, and the Magic Wand — and felt that these were good enough. On occasion, you may even resort to the Pen tools, which let you draw precise curves and convert them to selections or clipping paths, and maybe you're more likely to use paths after you've read Chapter 8 (you did read Chapter 8, didn't you?) You may, in fact, be so confident and content with these tools that you wonder what more a skilled Photoshop craftsman could possibly need.
Quite a bit, as it turns out. Every one of the tools just mentioned is only moderately suited to the task of selecting images. The lasso tools let you create free-form selections, but none of the tools ...
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