I would like to add a couple of things:
1. I understand the struggle to use masks. I was "afraid" of them for the longest time - until I learned how to use it. Now I use it all the time. I think the problem you had with the masks is probably because you didn't unlink the mask and the picture?
[ATTACH]17223[/ATTACH] by unlinking the mask and the content you can move the image around.
2. You can do the clipping simply by clicking on the layer to be clipped (layer 0 in dv8_fx's example - post #22) and press <Ctrl>+<Alt>+G (this way you don't have to try to click between lines). The real beauty of Clipping is that you "mask"multiple layers. This is something I recently learned. Here's an example:
[ATTACH]17225[/ATTACH] (using your Lady Gaga theme 
)
3. Now, I have the same question that I thought Coffee_King first posted. I know I can use an image (layer), even if it's too big for my canvas. I could simply leave it the way it is, but wouldn't that make my file bigger for no good reason?
[ATTACH]17226[/ATTACH]
Also, when I <Ctrl>+click on the layer thumbnail, the selection goes beyond the boundaries of the canvas.
[ATTACH]17227[/ATTACH]
I would like to simply do something like Select All, Invert the Selection, and delete. But that doesn't work; Photoshop says that there are no pixels selected.
So, I could - as Coffee_King suggested - crop the image, but that would crop the other layers as well. There's gotta be another way of doing this. Any suggestions?
Crazy to think that this long post is my first one...
Thank you!
