Tools for Cosplay Photo Editing

In this day and age, where self-image means everything, cosplay is no different. Compared to its humble beginnings decades ago, technological advances have made it possible to bring our favorite fictional characters to life.

Lighting, photo quality, angles, posing, and execution are taken into consideration. The costume, wig, props, accessories, and makeup are also factors. Whether it's re-enacting a scene, focusing deeply on your character's motifs and aesthetics, or you just want to enhance your cosplay to the best it can be, and all of these things aren't enough... that is where photo editing and manipulation come into play.

Normally, when you hear about photo editing and manipulation, the first thing that would come into mind is Photoshop or any of the Adobe programs such as Illustrator. While it's true that I do use Photoshop to enhance my cosplay photos, it is not the only program I use. I tend to use more than one program for editing when I'm in the mood for meticulous perfectionism.

In this article, we will focus on what photo editing programs can be used on your smartphone. As I am an Android phone user, I will be referring to the apps I've downloaded from the Google Play Store.

However, let me throw in a disclaimer: you don't have to use the apps I'm recommending here. I'd say go explore in the app store, choose the editing apps you want (make sure to check out the reviews too!), and see how it'll work out for you.

Without further ado...

Meitu

Meitu was one of the first photo editing apps I've downloaded. I still use it occasionally. I mainly use it to help with lighting (you can either adjust the lighting manually or have it be done automatically), to bring certain special effects in the photo, and even has the ability to let you add text in different fonts and formats. Sometimes, I do use its filters too, in order to help certain things stand out. It has a variety of stuff to choose from, depending on what you what you want to do.

Initially, I had used this to help my skin or makeup look better in photos. But I feel there's a limit to it if you keep layering filters and such; otherwise, it'll show in the photo that it was obviously edited. In my case, I know that the photo quality gets compromised once I see my eyebrows and nose look blurry after a certain point in editing (which is why I end up getting picky until I found some apps that don't have this problem). Keep in mind that I don't turn on the beauty cam feature on my phone camera if I shoot for cosplay selfies, so make sure to turn that off (or not go all the way to maximum effect) before you start shooting and editing.

However, I do encourage you to use the beauty editing function in Meitu. It does help get rid of pimples (and dark spots), wrinkles, dark circles, and eye bags.

Toolwiz Photos Pro Editor

This app, in my opinion, is the equivalent of Photoshop on your phone. It's actually handy for me when I don't have immediate access to my laptop.

Like Photoshop, it has useful features such as Patch (which acts like the Clone Stamp tool in this app), Healing, Blending Mixture, and others. My favorite feature here would have to be Resize because that helps me get the exact size I want when I upload photos on Instagram, so the whole photo doesn't get cropped (which is a problem for most people when they submit through the Instagram app).

Another favorite feature I like in this app are the collages. You get different designs and different formats, so you get to pick and choose how you see fit if you have multiple photos from cosplay photo shoots.

I'd recommend this for cosplay photos that are not selfies since a lot of photo editing apps tend to focus on selfies. So, some things can look off or flawed in other apps (like, for example, if you want to change your eye or hair color and it looks awry because it's at a different angle).

Airbrush

This is the app I use when it comes to touching up on my skin and makeup, especially if my makeup looks worn down in photos of certain lighting. It manages to erase my flaws without compromising the photo quality, so I can stop fussing about how my eyebrows and nose looked like they disappeared.

While it does have filters and certain makeup looks, I don't use them. There are other apps I use for makeup and overall appearance enhancement, so I'll get to those in a bit.

NiceEyes

If you can't afford contacts or don't want to wear them for cosplay, this is the app for you! This app has different eye colors under the rainbow and beyond (you can even get rainbow colored eyes too!) as well as different pupil shapes and how light enters the eyes. You can even choose how much you want to cover your real eye color as well as resize the eyes. You can choose to color either individual eye or both. You can also give yourself heterochromia eyes.

They also have special effect eyes such as Sharingan (in all forms), Byakugan, and Rinnegan from Naruto. They also have Lelouch's Geass eye from Code Geass. Sadly, there's not a lot of variety in the special effects library and I feel there should be more since a lot of fictional characters have a special eye.

A few examples...

Another nitpick I have is while I did say you can choose to color one eye individually, the other one that's not chosen is automatically colored. This serves as a problem because if you have only one eye open (when you're winking or wincing) or you're posing at an angle where only one eye is showing, the unedited eye that is unseen will obviously show an edit of the eye color.

For such cases, it's why I go to Photoshop to do eye color changing. I've yet to see if I can achieve this on Toolwiz, so I'll be testing that.

And while the developers say we can e-mail them if we want to add other eye colors/effects, unfortunately, they don't respond. I've e-mailed them about adding Lucina's Brand of the Exalt Eye some time ago and I never got an answer from them.

See what a huge difference photo editing and manipulation makes!

Anyone can do it, you just need to practice and have patience as well as perseverance. If you want to stand out from other cosplayers, these are only a few things you can do!

If I do have any more apps to add, I'll go back and edit this article.

I hope this helps you all!