Pixel-based masking versus the Pen tool

In this first project, we're going to take this open magazine which featured…the first words that I ever wrote on the topic of Photoshop.…And we're going to mask it against this synthetic woodgrain background and we're…going to do so with absolute precision and control using the Pan tool.…Now you might look at the magazine and figure well gosh…you know it's bright and it's set against the dark bacgkround.…Not all together uniform but certainly we could end up masking it using…a combination of color range and refine edge, for example.…Or we could manually trace it, point by point, using the Pen tool.…

Seems like masking is the better way to go.…Well, for the sake of comparison, let's try it out.…I'll go up to the Select menu, and I'll choose the Color Range command.…And I've reestablished the default settings, so the fuzziness is set to 40.…I'm going to go ahead and click in the background, let's say, and then shift…drag across the background in order to select the entire thing.…And that's really all there is to it.…