Planet Eclipse Tutorial

Using PS CS3

I have the tutorial for planeteclipse from the Adobe Photoshop Exchange and
it also can be found on the web at:
http://www.oman3d.com/tutorials/photoshop/video/solar_eclipse.php

It seems to be a great tutorial and teaches a novice such as myself many
techniques for PS. The one thing <probably me> is that it works fine until
very close to the end, then something goes wrong. Just before adding a
gradient layer, the tutorial says to add a Layer Mask and it show no visible
change to the way the image looks in the tutorial, however when I do that,
most of the image goes transparent leaving only the orb and the glow around
it. The background should stay black.

I was wondering if anyone knows why this is happening.

Also does anyone know if it is possible to get a printout of the tutorial
rather than using the video tutorial. I followed the video tutorial and
made my own hard copy, but I must have missed something or the tutorial is
in error.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you


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