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

I once spent four days on a book cover composite, every edge clean, every strand of hair painstakingly masked, only to send the file to the client and feel nothing but dread. The subject looked like she had been photographed in a different universe than the background, which, of course, she had. The lighting temperatures were off by what I estimated to be about 800 Kelvin. The shadows on her face pointed slightly left.