The Edge That Kills Your Composite: A Working Artist's Guide to Masking in Photoshop

I once spent three hours on a single strand of hair. Not because I’m obsessive. Because the client was a record label, the subject was a woman with curly, wind-blown hair photographed against a white studio backdrop, and the final image needed to place her inside a thunderstorm. Every strand that read wrong would pull the viewer out of the image. In compositing, the moment someone thinks “that looks edited,” you’ve lost them.