Why Your Composites Look Fake (And How Lighting Logic Will Fix Them)

Before I open Photoshop on any new project, I draw it. On paper, with a pencil, like it’s 1987. I sketch the light source, the shadow angles, the rough placement of every element. It sounds slow. It is slow. But every time I’ve skipped that step, I’ve paid for it later, sometimes in front of a client, sometimes just in front of my own monitor at 2am when I’m staring at a sky replacement that refuses to sit naturally in the scene.