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Quote - Then in PSP 5, the alpha channel was copied and pasted over the background photo. Note the grey outline round the figure.

That's why you have to render out to .PNG. No other format like TIFF or PSD works because they all include a non premultiplied alpha, which is what makes that nasty fringe around the transparent areas. But PNGs work perfectly. This is a simple render of simon i exported as .png and comped over a texture image (in photoshop). See how you get no artifacts at all, and still maintain a nice sharp edge.

But yes I agree about the personal prefererence thing. Some people like to fix everything in their mind before they render and some like to play around with it. The comp method works nicely when you want to try out different things which is how i like to work.