I'm the new guy...beginner's advice please

Greetings!

I have all the artistic knowledge and .05% of the technical knowledge to make it work on the web. Most of the discussion here seems to be about flash. Where can I go to get the basic graphic information?

My big question:

In Photoshop 6, how can you bring in a "cutout" image(for example- a hand) that is not a standard rectangular shape and place it over a tiled background so that the shape retains it's clean edges?

I hope you understand my ?--let me know and I'll restate.

Thanks!

[quote]In Photoshop 6, how can you bring in a "cutout" image(for example- a hand) that is not a standard rectangular shape and place it over a tiled background so that the shape retains it's clean edges?


Here's one way:
1. If you know how to use Bezier curves, use the pen tool to trace a path around the hand. If you don't know how to use Bezier curves, you can trace the hand via the lasso or magic wand, but it won't look as good.

2. Once you have the path around the hand, go to the paths tab, click the little arrow on the right and hit "Make Selection". In PS6, a dialog box pops up asking you the feather radius and if you want to anti-alias the selection. If you're going for a smoother edge, use anti-aliasing and a larger feather. For a crisper edge, turn off anti-aliasing and don't feather it.

3. OK, now you have a selection around your hand. Click the layers tab and look at the bottom of that box. Next to the "f" you'll see an icon of a box with a white square around it. Click that. It'll put a mask over the image. You can see on that particular layer that there's a chain and a thumbnail of your hand (in white) on an image that's all black. (A mask reveals only the selected part of the layer).

4. Put that layer wherever you want over whatever bg you want, and that's it.


An easier, but probably not as good of a way, is just trace the hand. Hit CTRL-D to apply a feather. Hit CTRL-I to select the inverse. Then hit backspace to delete everything else off the layer.