Hey all! I wanted to try and refine the edit guide to hopefully shed some light on how I go about approving edits and how I prefer edits to be presented, since it's quite hard to describe.

My ToS mentions the process of editing here;

• All edits to my designs must be run by me for confirmation.
• You may ONLY edit on top of my artwork for reference and demonstrative purposes. DO NOT publicly display artwork of mine that is edited.
• When editing MYO and guest artist designs for closed species, always ask the original artist if it is okay to edit their work AND display it.
• DO NOT MISPLACE YOUR UN-EDITED ADOPT FILE. Do not save edits over it. 

But this guide will serve as a visual for those who are cautious of overstepping boundaries or might not understand why an edit was denied.
In this guide I'll use a Dreamy as a visual, but this applies to all of my CS, and is something I employ to avoid designs being used as infinite MYOs or wiped entirely out of existence by any user rather than scheduled revamp events.

Click through to see!
LARGER IMAGE HERE IF IMAGE FAILS TO LOAD.

The chart above expands on what I look for in edits as far as a threshold of what is/isn't allowed. 

• Designs in my CS should always have their original design available. An edit will never 'cancel out' the existence of the original design. Do not ever delete the original design, even if you never personally use it.
• Things under "mostly OK" are borderline, meaning they can be approved in most cases, but you may be asked to make small changes in others.
• Colors are less of a concern to me over the marking theme being preserved, when it comes to judging edits. Most of the time each design holds its own uniqueness in the shapes and patterns people use to create them, so no matter the colors, they wind up being pretty distinct when left intact.
• However, in the case of designs whose markings are very few, or are extremely popular things (such as hearts, stars or diamonds like above) with no extra added themes, it's harder to allow the more drastic color edits that don't closely follow the original's contrasts. This is why COLOR SHIFT WITH CONTRASTS CHANGED above is listed as mostly OK.
• Above you can see that extensive marking edits can be okay if you use most/all of the original palette and you still include some of the main theme (in this case, hearts). The changes here (torso, stocking legs and filigree swirls) are very borderline because they introduce many different elements the original design did not have.
• Trait changes are also important to factor with edits, but are still less important than markings, and less important than colors. A combination of all three (traits, colors, markings) being changed, even if small, may also be too borderline to pass.
• Above all else, edits should reference the ORIGINAL DESIGN, and not existing edits unless the change is extremely minuscule. The further away from the original the design looks, the more likely I will ask you to change it.