A clipping path is a vector outline: a hard, decisive line around a subject. For a shoe, a bottle or a box that is exactly right. For hair, fur, feathers, lace or smoke it is the wrong tool, and the result is the plastic-looking cut-out everyone recognises.
Why a path fails on soft edges
Those edges are not lines. A strand of hair is partly transparent across its width, and the pixel at its edge is a blend of hair and whatever was behind it. A path has to decide in or out for every pixel, so it either clips strands off or drags a halo of the old background along with them.
What masking does instead
A mask stores a value per pixel rather than a yes or no, so a strand can be eighty per cent present at its centre and twenty per cent at its edge. Detail survives, and the subject sits on the new background without a fringe.
Alpha and layer masking are the same idea applied at different stages — one carried in the file for compositing later, the other built into a layered document your team can keep editing.
It costs more, and sometimes it is unnecessary
Masking takes longer than pathing, so it is worth being honest about which images need it. A model shot against a busy background needs it. The same model against clean seamless, with hair tied back, often does not.
What to send
Send the hardest file in the set, not the easiest. If it can be handled cleanly, everything behind it can.
