This week’s Re-Edit is cosplayed by Hettistitch, cosplaying as Jinx from League of Legends and DC’s Harley Quinn mashup.
A manic and impulsive criminal from Zaun, Jinx lives to wreak havoc without care for the consequences. With an arsenal of deadly weapons, she unleashes the loudest blasts and brightest explosions to leave a trail of mayhem and panic in her wake. Jinx despises boredom, and gleefully brings her own chaotic brand of pandemonium wherever she goes.
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 photo so I can see if I would make the same steps or make alternative decisions.
The first step was to crop the photo to 1:1 square as I felt the emptiness of the photo was too dominating.
I remember enjoying seeing the blue colour in the steel structure behind so I made sure I brought out the colours in that as best as possible.
I then transfer the photo into Photoshop and the first thing I did was to tidy up any fray hair using the “heal brush” to remove any put of place hair.
The next step was to sharpen the photo. In the original RAW file, the image didn’t look pin-sharp but using various layers to give the appearance of the photo looking sharper.
I’ve always where it’s needed, change the colour of the eye of the cosplayer to match the character. So in this photo, I change it the blue to match the colour scheme of Harley Quinn.
On the right side of the photo, you can see the hotel sign. So selecting the area where the sign was, I used “Content Aware Fill” to remove it.
My last step was to applied the skin smoothering and contouring techniques I do in Photoshop.
COMPARING THE TWO PHOTOS
Overall, I do like the updated 2021 photo as it looks more natural, looks like it was taken in camera and not manipulated too much in post-editing compared to the 2017 photo.
Having the photo cropped in, make a huge difference to the photo as you can better see the cosplayer in her full outfit.
If I was going to further improve the 2021 photo now able to see the photo side by side, I would try and do something with the sky and not leave looking too dull.
You can compare the two photos individually above.