This week’s Re-Edit is cosplayed by XSENtrix Cosplays, cosplaying as Lightning, from the franchise Final Fantasy XIII.
Lightning is a young woman with wavy rose pink hair and pale aqua eyes. Lightning’s eye colour has been officially noted to be blue. In Final Fantasy XIII, she wears a variation of the standard Guardian Corps uniform with an ankle-length red cape attached to the left side of her back and a light burgundy leather detachable pocket on her left leg.
2020 EDIT PROCESS
I started with the basic changes I always do, by adjusting the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, HSL, and etc. Throughout this project of re-editing my older photos, I do not refer to the original edited the photo so I can see if I would make the same steps or make alternative decisions.
Once I have done my basic changes, I next changed the aspect ratio of the photo to 16:9 as I felt it was nicer that way.
I tried my best to make sure the face was better illumunated as possible without over doing it not to make it look to “fake” the illumination. Pushing the shadows and brightness as far as I felt comfortable.
I wanted to keep intact the yellow beam of light as best as possible, in both the wall and on the reflection on the cosplayer.
Next I added a pink shade across the back of the cosplayer to help compliment the look the cosplayer has with the pink hair and red/maroon trim to the outfit.
I then moved the photo to Photoshop to carry out my skin smoothing technique and also contouring.
I really like how the 2020 photo came out and looks much better compated to the 2016 edit. There is one thing I now notice between the two photos where on the right side of the image of the cosplayer hair, there is a few strands of hair which look out of place which I know I can easily edit out.
Also the added pink shade in the background look as natural as the original blue background which can be see in the 2016 photo.