If you want to view a larger version of this photo to see the comparison, go here.
What I think I did well: I like the mood of the photo and the lighting, even though that was a mistake, lol. I also like how Kid looks like he’s coming forward at you and Medusa is kind of hiding in the shadows.
What I could’ve done better: There are some parts that I don’t like on the shadows. Just some weird shadows or ones that don’t really belong there. Also the arm of Medusa has just a tiny bit different skin tone than her face. Not sure why that happened but I’m thinking that both of the above things happened because of the flash off to camera left.
Verdict: Overall I like how the photo came out and think I portrayed their Soul Eater cosplay well. Definitely could’ve done better but I think I did fairly well given that this was taken in the parking lot of a hotel, haha. Unfortunately since it was a “mistake” to begin with, I didn’t go back and take some other photos to straighten out faces or guns but oh well, overall not too bad ^_^.
I figured I’d show a before and after shot of the latest Soul Eater cosplay photo I did. The original was shot at night in RAW format with one speedlight off to camera left. The funny thing about this shot was that it’s kind of a mistake, lol. Originally I wanted both strobes to go off that I had set up on either side of the camera but only one went off camera left. I looked at the “mistake” and decided to keep it, later deciding that it was the best out of the group of shots that I took for these two characters and with this pose.
So first tip here would be that it’s ok to make mistakes, in fact, I encourage it! Sometimes we get our best work when we make a mistake and as long as you figure out what you did (learn from your mistake), you can always apply that to another shot down the road.
Before I go into how exactly I processed this, keep in mind that I could’ve just not processed it at all and kept it as is… In fact, some people might prefer that but I wanted a much more dramatic look to it. Dramatic shadows, more of a sinister look, a bit more epic and a little less color in the “bad guy” (aka Medusa).
So lets see… After I took the shot, I loaded it into Lightroom, did some minor (very minor) exposure, recovery, clarity and contrast adjustments. Then I decided which camera profile I wanted to use. Camera profiles are just little files that do some minute adjustments to the base photo. I usually choose the “neutral” one just cause it’ll give me the most “boring” photo for me to work with so that I can do all the adjustments I want manually.
Then I brought it into PhotoShop where I balanced out the colors more and got my skin tones right. I do color balance and skin tones first because the longer you wait, the harder it will be to correct them later and you want a good base to work with. for more difficult color balance issues, I bring the photo into LAB color and mess with it there but mostly for this photo I just got the skin tones consistent. Basically you find a skin tone that you like, select that color, create a solid color layer with the color you just chose and set that layer to Hue. Then reduce the opacity and mask that layer off so that only the right parts of the photo are effected (just the skin). You also have to be careful and make sure you mask off the eyes, lips hair and really anything else u don’t want discolored. This technique works well with skin but not with much else.
So I did that twice. First I nailed down the skin tone of Medusa which I wanted a bit more pale and dead looking since she’s a witch and since colors with less saturation will appear further away.
Just to comment on that real quick. If you want something to look further away, desaturate it a bit or give a tiny bit more of a blue hue. If you want something to look a bit closer, give it a bit of a warmer, yellow hue and saturate it a bit more. Also darker objects will appear further away while lighter ones will appear closer. Take a look at the two photos side by side. You’ll notice that Medusa on the left one (original) looks a bit closer and Kid looks a bit further away whereas on the right it’s the opposite. It’s really subtle but hopefully you will notice it. If not then I probably haven’t done a good enough job and creating the desired effect.
Anyway, next I nailed down Kid’s skin tone which I wanted to be a bit more yellow and a bit more vibrant.
After that I worked on the eyes a bit, just making them a bit brighter. Not too much though because otherwise it would become too strong later on.
This next step is really one of the most, if not the most important/most difficult steps. I create a blank layer, fill it with 50% gray and set the entire layer to “Soft Light.” I then dodge and burn, dodging parts that I want lighter and burning parts that I want darker. Basically I just wanted the right side darker and the left side lighter but you really have to make sure that the shadows look somewhat natural. With this technique it’s really easy to make things look really fake. Obviously it’s already somewhat fake but it’s not quite obtrusive yet and still blends with the other shadows. If it’s starting to look fake, run a gaussian blur at about 24 or so and that will smooth out the shadows so that it blends much better. The key to this technique is really making sure you get a good blend of shadows otherwise it’s really easy to tell that the shadow has been put there.
Pretty much the last big step is getting that really edgy shadow. What I do is merge the layers and create a copy of the merged backgrounds. Then I make that a smart layer and apply the shadows/highlights adjustment to it. To start I leave that adjustment at the default but what’s nice is that I can adjust it later if I want. I almost never go more than 50 on the shadows and don’t mess with the highlights. After that’s set I add a Black&White adjustment layer and only set it to overlay. Once that is set, I can go back to the smart layer and mess with the shadow slider to see what looks good.
Hopefully by now I’ve made the Soul Eater cosplay of these two look good and not bad, lol. All that’s really left to do is sharpen and put my watermark on it. Other than that it’s ready to resize and upload to different places on the web!
