I figured it out... I didn't realize I needed to take the elements I was trying to merge out of their respective masking halves before trying to merge them... I learned a lot, so overall, I consider the follow along a success...
So many of the questions I've been googling lead me to this forum... I've been finding a lot of the answers to my questions here... Id like to thank everyone for that...
jjwalton got a reaction from A_B_C in Anybody know what I might be doing wrong here? (Scrolling Background Tutorial)