The Edge Is Where Your Composite Lives or Dies: A Working Artist's Guide to Masking

I once spent four hours on a single strand of hair. Not retouching it. Not painting it. Masking it. It was a portrait composite for a book cover, a woman standing against a stormy coastal sky, and the flyaway strands at the crown of her head were catching the light in exactly the way that makes a photo feel real and alive. I knew that if I lost those strands to a hard mask edge, the whole piece would collapse.