Sealife DC2000 Raw question

While I think you can learn a lot from the exercise of trying to replicate the in-camera jpg's, I doubt the settings you come up with will apply in more than general terms to other shots, unless they are taken under the same lighting conditions.   But learning how to process the shots that way should allow you to understand the path to take for processing other, quite different, shots.    I find that reviewing my shots each night on a dive trip helps a lot to eliminate problem settings for the next day.     Stuff that makes the post-processing itself easier.   Sometimes that is to take reference shots in conjunction with shots I really want to turn out well.   By that I mean to take a shot of something easy to color balance in the same lighting as the desired shot so I know what settings to use on the desired shots.  A reference shot might be another diver (tanks, black suits and metal bits are often excellent references for white balance adjustments.

And white balance is a real key here.   Get that right first, along with brightness, and then start applying curves and the like.

Also, don't necessarily use the Adobe Standard profile.   I shoot Nikon, and I find I like the Camera Standard profile much better as a starting point.

I'm still wondering what magic sauce Sealife has cooked into their jpg engine.   Nikon's Auto white balance is nowhere near good enough to use at any depth.