City Underwater - part 1

For this tutorial I have downloaded 2 stock photos from sxc.hu. You can use any photo you want, but if you would like to follow along exactly see the step image for the exact source urls.

Okay, now open up the city image and lets mask out the sky since there are no clouds under water. The method I use is to select the pen tool and create a path that I will later convert to a mask. Select the pen tool and make sure the "paths" button is selected.

Be sure to zoom in close and click as much as you feel necessary to create a path that follows the contours of the buildings.

Once you have finished your path you can right click and select "make selection" and set the feather radius to 1 pixel.

Your path will now become a selection! Since I made a path around the sky instead of the buildings I need to invert that selection by going to: select>inverse. Now click on the vector mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette and your city will be masked out! Since I am happy with my mask I'm going to apply it by right clicking on the icon of the layer mask and choose "apply layer mask"...this will be important later on.