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

The Lie Your Eyes Tell You First I once spent three days perfecting a mask on a figure — hair strands, motion blur, the works. The client loved it. I hated it. Not because the mask was wrong. The mask was the best work I’d done that month. I hated it because the second I stepped back from the screen, the subject looked like a cardboard cutout standing in front of a painting.