Photoshop layers question

[Ballistics]

Keep it.
There's no edits in the part of the image you masked out so there's no reason to show those parts of the image anyway.
When you keep the mask that layer will simply show the area of the image you edited and nothing more.

But adding the mask didn't do anything.

 

[Judobreaker]

Not if you don't actually paint on it.

Lunacore Photoshop Training - Layer Masks tutorial (part 1/3)

 

[Big Mike]

The mask is really only useful (in that scenario) if you want to make further adjustments on additional layers, but may want to go back to a previous layer and make changes there.

As someone said earlier, for edits to the hair, mask off everything but the hair...for edits to the skin, mask off everything but the skin etc. and so on. Then if you want to go back to the background layer (on a lower level layer), anything you do there, that isn't part of a further layer, will be seen at the top.

Another method that I tend to use more often now...is to create a new layer (duplicate or blank), make my edits on it...take a few seconds to think about how confident in my edits...then I just flatten the layer and move on. As an example, if I'm going to remove blemishes, I'll duplicate the background layer (I always try to keep an untouched background layer). Then I'll create a new/duplicate layer (again)...and remove the blemishes. I'm probably not going to want to brings those back, so I just merge the top layer with the layer below and move on to another edit. For this to be a good system, you have to know (guess) whether you are going to want to come back to a section/edit later or not.

One last thing to keep in mind, when you create duplicate layers, again and again...the size of the file grows and grows. You could end up filling your hard drive with layers.

 

[KmH]

What version of Photoshop are you using? What Photoshop reference materials do you have at hand?

Investigate - Smart Objects - What Is a Smart Object in Photoshop? | eHow.com

Photoshop How-To: Get Smart About Smart Objects | CreativePro.com

Smart Objects and Smart Filters « Julieanne Kost's Blog

Also you can access Adobe Community Help by pressing the keyboard F1 key, or clicking on Help > Photoshop Help on the Applications bar, while Photoshop is open.