Just wanted to show what I do when I get back to my office (bedroom).First I do basic alterations, setting the picture straight if needed, cropping to around the model, len correction and aberration and start playing with the balance of exposure and contrast as well as other basic tweaks.
Next as you can see in this compare, I’m not into major composite edits, just as I call it “colour corrections” the scene, making areas brighter such as model/cosplayer, face, weapons etc. I do like to have a colourful and vibrant, so where I can, I boost up the saturation and increase any colour accents on the screen, in this example, I would have increased the blues.
I’ve only started including into my work “smoothing”. But as you can see this character doesn’t need smoothing around the face. I export this photo into Photoshop and start making extra tweaks like pushing in/out bumps, removing unwanted lines and any specific SFX work I need to do such as add lightsaber (obviously not for this photo).
I hope this give an insight to the amount of edit I produce. I know its not much compare to other photographers who go for the full on edits, composite change, major photoshop changes, but I like to keep things as close to the original photo.