lepr

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Using the Dodge and burn on a mask layer is handy when using to affect only shadows, midtones or highlights. Eg. Dodging a lighter sky through a dark tree.
Tx

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General Mayhem — cartoony vector character design and illustration. Hope you like it.

Thanks. You could do that now as SVG fonts are starting to be supported, so you can can have colour, gradients etc. Would be quite fun but would need some planning to give them a consistent look. 
 
A quick go at colouring it.
 

Or most things starting with V! Bit of a doodle, I was going to have it as a solid pattern but liked the look of sort of capping the top and bottom and leaving some background.

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I know this is a small part of what you plan to achieve and I don't mean to imply that it should be a priority but to be honest that was also my first impression of the UI as well. It's not necessarily the colors but the way they are executed. Some have too much details,  outdated or are plain confusing. The colors don't follow a particular palette and lack consistency. Even the toolbar ones like 'breaking points' and 'join' etc. seem out of context. The persona icons also could use some work on context and execution. Not sure what market you aim at but it does make an impression.
The iPad version of Photo seems a lot better IMO.
Anyway, I use your software from time to time for personal projects and prefer some of the features and workflow over other design software. Glad you guys are stepping forward and won the Microsoft developing award. 

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Note that if you use the pen tool to draw a selection, the shape you draw must then have a fill colour (any colour) for that to work. So once drawn, just fill the closed shape with colour and cmd-click (ctrl-click windows) on the shape thumbnail, as @owenrsays.
Also, the actual pixel selection will be on the shape layer, so you will need to click on the image layer to actually move the selection focus to the image. Once done, you can use Refine Edges, like any selection
That is assuming you want to end up with a pixel selection?
If you want it to be a clipping path, with an adjustable vector outline, just drag the image to the nesting position of the shape.
 

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And, to end the discussion, I'll just say that 1.7 will let you snap curve handles to grid, geometry, anything you want... it will be an option, to allow snapping handles to happen the same as snapping nodes, so it can be turned on for those that require the feature.
This will be separate to the constraining features I demoed earlier showing constraining of handles directions and snapping lengths.  the two features will live together, but you can use one or both.
 

Snapping handles (and nodes) to the grid can be useful for basically anything that belongs to some sort of design "system": signaletic/signage design, icon/ui design or glyphs on a font all depend on an underlying grid structure to give them consistency/coherence. The grid may not be visible but the reference points it provides both for the nodes and handles of the objects that compose the set helps to strengthen/unify the elements and make them part of the same family/all sharing particular traits (helping shaping curves, angles, dimensions/scale etc precisely). Unless we could constraint both handle angles and their lengths to a specific (configurable) size/metric for this same purpose there's no other quick way than using a grid and snapping both handles and nodes to it. This is particularly important when we are building several elements that must share a very specific set of characteristics.
It works a bit like layout grids for publications - we don't see them (and they work at a different scale/level when compared to the grids for icon/fonts etc) - but the principle is the same: the "rhythm", sense of organisation/hierarchy they "impose" on the elements help to strengthen the layout and give it coherence on all spreads/pages.

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made with designer, just one curve with a gradiënt duplicated.

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Yes but if you are undoing cropping to get it just right and tweaking so essentially doing it over and over it becomes annoying real quick. It's little things like this that make me go back to using Photoshop. It's counter-intuitive. If I pick a view size, I don't want the app to change it by itself.

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