Recents shots from Bay of Pigs, Cuba

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Edits in LR (from practically unrecoverable photo): Custom WB -1.12 Exp -35 contrast -100 highlights +13 clarity +63 dehaze very small adjust.. in HSL

Now here is a situation I've seen plenty of times. And you can do better, assuming you have the dynamic range I think you do. First, white balance using an eyedropper on the barracuda. Next, play with overall exposure and highlight reduction to brighter things up without going too far with the silver scales. Then crop, and add a BUNCH of contrast in, and you may come up with something like this:

Barracuda always seem to hover just out of decent photo range. Eagle rays are worse.

I do an apart with the barracuda. I had initially thought to discard this shot . This was the JPG original from where I edit (I now found the RAW so I will work on it).

original. I was close to discard it.

I have experimented starting from your suggestions and try and tested several settings. I was not satisfied with the first one I am not either very satisfied with any of the other version i have tried. But this is a good exercise

This is how it results from WB in the barracuda (and slightly adjusting) , -100 HL,  +70 contrast, -1.25 exp. , +40 whites, + 20 dehaze., +12 sat , adjusting water in HSL and even for my first time the use of split toning. And more cropping

By the way, I took your barracuda and experimented. I mainly dehazed and Adjusted hue and saturation of the blue/aqua. This is the result:

What do you think?

Thanks and regards