Everyone learns their own way to masking. I do an awful lot of it, and over the years my masking workflow has simplified into starting with a Magic Wand, testing the limits, catching the crumbs and then mostly having to do all the edges (and often points between) with the Brush Mask. For exceedingly-complex jobs I rely on Knockout 2 or Topaz ReMask or Fluid Mask or whatever the other one is that I have to run in PPx64, and again touching up manually in PP. You gave us the execrable Cutout Lab and it's hopeless, but didn't you guys own Knockout 2? It still does a fantastic job and maybe some of its engine could be incorporated as an Engine Option for the various selection tools (whilst leaving the current engine as an option as well, or maybe having three or four different selectable Seleciton Engines for different types of images) or at least a foundational improvement to the current one, which seems unchanged now for many versions.