Why Your Composites Look Fake (And It's Not the Masking)

The Lie That Looked Perfect I spent three weeks on a book cover composite early in my career. The mask was clean. The color grading was tight. The client approved it. Then the book shipped, and I saw the printed cover on a shelf at a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, and the shadow under the main figure was pointing southeast when every other shadow in the image pointed northwest. Nobody caught it.