This week’s Re-Edit is cosplayed by Evie Gene Creates, cosplaying as Widowmaker, based off Blizzard’s Overwatch.
Widowmaker equips herself with whatever it takes to eliminate her targets, including mines that dispense poisonous gas, a visor that grants her squad infra-sight, and a powerful sniper rifle that can fire in fully-automatic mode.
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.
Next step I took was to straighten up the photo to give the cosplayer a more upright pose in the photo. But in doing this, I would end up cutting off the barrel of the sniper weapon she has holding. I did think as, in the original photo, she looks as if she was learning more back which can give the illusion she’s falling backwards.
After correcting the rotation of the photo, I transferred the photo into photoshop, as I wanted to paint in the faded areas of the suit to give the suit more a consistent look. How I achieve this was to take colour samples of the suit and gently paint in the colour. I have to take a few samples of different areas of the suit so the area didn’t have a flat colour scheme.
As I was in Photoshop, I applied the skin smoothering and contouring techniques at this point.
When I transferred the photo to Lightroom, I started to experiment with the Gradient Filter of the colours of Widowmaker Purple and Indigo just to enhance the colours of the cosplay. I used Gradient Filters as I wanted to fill in the background with the same colours but not overpower the existing colours on the cosplayer.
Comparing the two photos, 2020 like many of the updated photos, looks brighter and fresher to look at. I feel I could have done better with the improvement faded areas on the suit. You can see the eyes of the cosplayer much better in the 2020 photos compared to the 2016 photo.
Check out the slider of the two photos to see the comparison.