From Illustrious to photo: how I made an adult, realistic Raphtalia LoRA for Krea 2

This is how I made Raphtalia (adult, realistic) for Krea 2: a deliberately aged-up, grown-woman version of the character from The Rising of the Shield Hero, in a realistic photographic style, safe for all audiences. The trick: let an Illustrious checkpoint that already knows her draw her, then turn those images into photographs with Krea 2 before training.

👉 The LoRA: Raphtalia (adult, realistic) | Krea 2 — trigger rphtlv2_perso.

1. Start from a checkpoint that already knows her

My first attempt (one "master" face, then variations) gave a nice woman who did not really look like Raphtalia. Much better: the realistic Illustrious checkpoint Illust-Asian_coser_Realism by Ray3780 (thanks!) knows her from her name alone. A simple prompt is enough:

Raphtalia from the rising of the shield hero in a photorealistic picture, <outfit and scene>

with a negative prompt that pushes away anything young-looking or revealing. I made 18 images: her armor with sword and shield, the shrine-maiden outfit, a travel cloak, and everyday clothes (sweater, hoodie at a café, coat, summer dress…), so the LoRA does not only know one costume.

2. Turn them into photos with Krea 2 img2img

Illustrious renders look like a perfect cosplay doll. One img2img pass on Krea 2 CyberRealistic (8 steps, CFG 1, euler/simple, Detailer LoRA, a "candid raw photograph, real skin texture, not a doll, not cosplay plastic" prompt) fixes the skin and light:

• 0.25: still a doll.

• 0.35: the sweet spot — real skin, same face, same outfit.

• 0.45: details start to drift (armor, ears, expression).

Krea also dulls her rose-red eyes, so the last step copies the original eye color back onto the photo, pixel by pixel (color channels only, in Lab space).

3. Captions: describe the hair, never the ears

• One fixed hair phrase everywhere: long straight reddish-brown hair with straight blunt bangs (or … in a single side braid). Hair stays promptable.

• Never mention her ears or tail ("fox ears", "cat ears"…): they are part of her identity and must be carried by the trigger word.

Training: ai-toolkit on Krea-2-Raw, 18 images plus crops, rank 32, lr 1e-4, 1024 px, 1380 steps, a checkpoint every 300 steps (about 75 minutes on a 16 GB card).

4. Choose the epoch on several bases

Same prompt, same seed, every saved epoch on several Krea 2 checkpoints. Resemblance keeps improving up to the final epoch, which is the one published.

Lesson learned: in this test the hair came out pink. My testing tool injected the character sheet's hair description, which said "soft pinkish-brown". Writing reddish-brown instead fixed it immediately:

Tips

• Add short wide rounded tanuki ears, not pointed, otherwise some checkpoints drift to fox ears.

• Add adult cues for a mature face: a grown woman in her late twenties with a mature adult face, defined cheekbones.

• Best on CyberRealistic Krea 2 v4, Krea 2 turbo and Moody Primer. Avoid BSS for her: it makes her look younger and loses her ears.

• Please keep her adult and SFW.

Results

Fan work, not affiliated with the rights holders of The Rising of the Shield Hero.