Jess,

The problem is that there are lots of ways to do this. I can outline one process, but there are others that might be more suitable to your particular workflow and the specific image you are working with. There are also a lot of good tutorials around for how to do selections. It might help for you to post the image so I can make a better judgement, but assuming that your shirt has fairly well defined outlines...

1) Make a duplicate layer of the background (in the layers palette drage the background down to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette)
2) Select the magnetic lasso from the tools palette.
3) select just the shirt going around the outline, and occaisonally click (single click only) the mouse to lock a particular position for the lasso. Play with this a bit a nd you'll get used to just how it works. You can adjust a few parameters to make its behaviour more suitable for your particular task.
4) Make sure your selection of the shirt is as accurate as you can make it. Zoom in and use the + and - loasso options (ctrl and alt on the PC) to add and subtract from you selection.
5) It will probably be a good idea to feather this selection a bit (depends on the size and sharpness of the image.) Say 1-2 pixels.
6) Npw with the copy layer selected and your "marching ants"howing that your shirt is selected, click the little square icon with a circle in it at the bottom of the layers palette. This will create a layer mask from the selection. In the layers palette you will see a black & white square next to the tumbnail of the image on the copy layer. This is the layer mask.
7) click on the thumbnail image in the copy layer so that it becomes highlughted.
8) now you can paint as sloppily as you like and you will only paint on the image in the area that is revealed by the white part of the layer mask.

Remember you can aways touch it up however you want (blur it, change it by painting in it with black or white, invert it, etc). Make sure that you have the black & white maks selected before you do this.

Let me know if you have any more questions, but the most important key is... EXPERIMENT (and always start working with a copy of the opriginal image layer). You can always undo, step backwards, use the history brush. Unless you do something really silly, you can't hurt anything.

PS has so many tools to make your work easy, you have to spend time to learn them - I've only just scratched the surface myself.

= Ed =

JESS RUSSELL wrote:
> Ed...I am new at this...I got the duplicate, but how do I then get
> the Mask?
> jess
>
>
>
> Ed Rotberg wrote:
> > Use a second layer with a mask that won't let you paint "outside
> > the lines". Then you can use the brush with gusto!
> >
> > = Ed =
> >
> > JESS RUSSELL wrote:
> > > I cant control the color brush with my mouse.. I have tried to
> > > change the color of my shirt, but I zig zag the brush all over the
> > > place.. is there a tool or means of doing a fine job? I have ps 6
> >
> > --
> > = Ed Rotberg =
> >
> > 'A waist is a terrible thing to mind'
>

--
= Ed Rotberg =

'A waist is a terrible thing to mind'