Dodging and burning in Photoshop mimics a process done in the darkroom to lighten and darken certain parts of an image. I burn the outer rim of the iris to make it a little darker, then I dodge the inner circle of the iris to make it brighter. I hate dodging and burning in the darkroom- but it's one of my favorite tools in Photoshop!
I've never used Photoshop Elements, but on CS3 the mask button is at the bottom of the layers palette. It is a small rectangle with a circle inside of it.You can use it to hide parts of the layer without erasing it.
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