Tips for Editing Cosplay Photos

It’s up to the cosplayer whether they wish to edit their photos or not. I feel it’s often beneficial to adjust the lighting and colours of your cosplay image. Read on for my tips for cosplay photo editing.

· Decide what editor you want to use. If you just want to do a bit of lighting correction and cropping, a basic editor on your pc or phone will do the job. If you’re looking to heavily edit your photos with a completely new background and add an extra arm, then Adobe Photoshop or something similar is your best bet. I use GIMP to edit my images on my laptop – it’s a free program that is similar to Photoshop. I also use PicsArt on my phone.

· Play around with lighting. Often, my original photos don’t look the best due to lighting. Either it’s too dark, or everything is overexposed and washed out. I play around with the brightness and contrast, and the curves of my images.

Unedited vs. Edited. You can see the difference in lighting here.

· Temperature. I find that the temperature of an image is good to play around with. I tend to stick with a colder temperature for characters such as Sherlock, where the show is set and filmed in grey and drab England. Warmer temperatures are great for happy and bright characters. I made my Satine images slightly warmer.

Cooler temperature vs. Warmer temperature.

· Don’t feel pressured into editing yourself. In today’s society, and especially on social media, we always worry about what we look like. Don’t feel like you have to drastically edit your waist to be thinner etc. You look awesome exactly how you are! In terms of editing myself, I usually just edit out any blemishes I have to make my face smoother, and sharpen my eyes so they pop.

· Blur the background. My camera does not do much in terms of depth of field, so I like to blur out the background of my images. This allows for my cosplay to stand out more, and for people to focus more on me and my costume than the background of the image.

Unedited vs. Edited. Here you can see the blurred background makes me stand out more.

· Get creative! People love to see weird and wonderful edits of your photos. I love playing around with filters and effects. In the future I plan to make some pastel edits of my cosplays – the kind you seen online with flower crowns and ‘cute’ phrases.