Thank you for your suggestions and words of encouragement, guys. I really appreciate it.

As a long-time (+1 year) concealer wearer, I can attest that nobody will ever notice anything wrong with your hair unless you actually tell them. (A close friend of mine is still convinced that I got a hair transplant! "Well, you must have have DONE something, you almost had no hair there!")

So I'm not worried about detectability, really.

I have some doubts about making the template, though. My hairline has receded considerably, and I'd like to reconstruct it. Since the only almost-balding part of my scalp is the stripe going from the crown to the hairline, I guess I should go for a somewhat "T-shaped" topper in order to

1. Fill in the crown (the stem of the "T")
2. Restore the receding hairline (the "top bar" of the "T") to its 2004 state (or even pre-2004 state).

In short, I want to look 20/23 again. I now I know pull this off easily because I've a very youthful, wrinkle-free face and I often get carded!

Problem is, I don't know how to shape this, honestly, especially the hairline. I'm a total newbie. Should it be straight, curved, should I keep the lateral recesses (pic attached too), what? I have no idea. In 2004 I had no recesses (picture attached, from my passport photo, labeled "2004 hairline")

I'll post pictures of my bare scalp tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I've applied some concealer yesterday and I don't want to remove it, applying it again is a pain in the arse. I've attached a picture of my current scalp though. I think you can see both the concealer and the recesses. In my opinion it's pretty good but the hairline may look hinky to some since it's quite difficult to "fade" realistically.

Any suggestions?

Thanks again for your help, guys. I'm impressed with what I've seen so far, but I'm really lost here. Also sorry for the long post and all those pictures, I just wanted to be as clear as possible.