The Edge Is Where Composites Live or Die: A Working Artist's Guide to Masking

I once spent four hours on a single strand of hair. Not because I’m precious about my work, but because the rest of the composite, a woman emerging from a storm cloud for an album cover, was already locked in. The lighting read correctly. The color grading was consistent. The shadows fell where physics said they should. But that one strand of hair, catching the backlight, was sitting on top of the image instead of inside it.