what photo program are you useing ?? In Adobe photoshop 7.0 you click layer than new. (3) Or just right click on the active layer and choose duplicate.(2) Your basicaly trying to make a copy of the layer so you can work with it and not muck up the original. The channels are the RGB ones ( Red , Green , Blue ) (1) I find the fill method a pain and you some times miss stuff so i use the polygonal lasso tool. Its kind of like a sewing machine you just start on a edge and follow along it clicking .