Anyone do much underwater shooting and post-processing?

Lots of issues there, including blown highlights and a wicked purple cast, but that's to be expected trying to work from jpg. I shot all my examples in RAW and worked from there.

In my 'after' example, the clarity was actually a bit better than reality, and the dark areas are just a bit too dark (a result of playing with black slider to enhance clarity). That purple color of Connie's wetsuit is really tough to get right.

By the way, my late wife took a picture of me taking a picture of her on that dive, and this is what it looked like to a Canon point-n-shoot out of camera. (No RAW). In this shot, the color balance is off of course, but the haziness seems about right. I've been to St Thomas diving three times now, and it's always been like this.





--
Phoenix Arizona Craig
www.cjcphoto.net
"I miss the days when I was nostalgic."

Joachim B said:

PHXAZCRAIG said:

Scuba-related. It's become my favorite type of photography, except for not being able to get out and do it during the pandemic.

I'm looking for someone who has done a lot of this, preferably with Lightroom. I have a number of question, but let's start with a common one. Color balance, What is your method for getting the 'right' color temp and tint at various depths and ISO values (with whatever camera. )

I'm not a beginner at this. Looking for philosophies in general, but looking for sophisticated color balance techniques.

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I did quite a lot of UW post-processing, but got a problem with my ear now so stopped suba-diving. In the past I have made a few tutorials on correcting UW pictures, I can look if i can find them for you and post them here.

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OK, I would like to learn.

Joachim B said:

the TLDR on this is that (a few years ago) LR didn't cut the heavy corrections that are necessary, and I had to use a real editor like Photoshop to get good results. I haven't tried it in the newer versions of LR.

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I've used PS a little bit, about 10+ years ago, but never came close to mastering it. I started using Lightroom after a long vacation one year where I had to RAW-convert, time-stamp-manage and organize shots from two Nikon DSLR's, two Canon point-n-shoots, one Sony RX100 and some cellphone shots. Switching from Sony to Canon to Nikon software to get the 'best' raw conversions just got to be too much hassle.

I'm still on the non-subscription Lightroom 6.14. I don't know what I'm missing from newer versions, but the version I have can do more than I know how anyway. I haven't mastered it, and in fact there are develop modules I've never or barely touched so far.

Joachim B said:

Problem is that the deeper you go, the more red and yellow light is filtered out, so that is gone. If you don't use a really powerfull strobe, those colours will be gone, and cannot be recoverd. If you want to bring them back, you can do that, but you would have to get a lot more red into the midtones and highlights, and less in the darks and shadows.

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Yes, that is all basic stuff.

Joachim B said:

Now that LR has luminosity masking and very targeted color correction tools, it might be possible to do it in there.

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I'm not sure my version has it, nor do I have a clue what that means, but I'm interested to learn and see if it helps my workflow and/or results.

I have to say that Lightroom by default or almost always with auto-anything does a terrible job on underwater images, and it took me a long time to know how to approach changes. Many, perhaps most, of my underwater images have 10-30 editing steps, which seems like a lot except most of them are so familiar now I could dial in a set of changes that gets me in the ballpark in a few seconds. And the Sync function of Lightroom is just brilliant in making it easy to apply complex changes to multiple images.

After a lot of playing about with the channels I managed this





But then I started checking photos of fireworms and wonder if it shouldn't look more like this

Nicely done on the first shot, especially starting with JPG.

As for 'actual / real' color, I don't know, but I don't see how it could be that red.

Looking up bearded fireworm color variations with Google, I came upon this statement:

"Its colors are varied and range from greenish, to yellowish, to reddish, grayish through white with a pearly glow"

Your late wife took a very good pic.







--
Always teach for understanding, not agreement.
JC Sofield
www.pbase.com/jcsofield

Back to your original post, manipulating individual channels seems to allow quite large corrections without causing problems. It's time consuming though. For example I did the fireworm in RGB and then having read Joachim's comment tweeked the red and green midtones and highlights with Hue/Saturation. I think I might have overdone the green a little. I wonder if I could do better in CMYK. That means another a few hours!

Check

https://silkypix.isl.co.jp/en/how-to/function/underwater-photo-controller/

There is a purple haze now, you have added too much red to the mid-tones

something like this I think.... If you wanted to use L*ab mode there are some more options, but this in in RGB mode

A few centuries ago I madethis little tutorial on UW-correction using L*ab mode . It's in the galleries of my old account, that I can't use anymore. long story.

start bottom left with a 16 bit image in L*ab, and go counter clockwise.

That looks nice. What's the first layer 'Color Fill 1'? An orange filter perhaps?

Is that control in Lightroom 6.14?

I can't bring up your link to the tutorial.

timccr said:

That looks nice. What's the first layer 'Color Fill 1'? An orange filter perhaps?

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just a solid color adjustment layer. I mostly start with red, but you can shift the color for what works for your image.

The desaturated copy of the image is clipped on top of that in multiply mode, and the color layer is in screen mode. That way there is red added to the light partks of the image, but in the darks it is a much darker, less saturated red.

It's all photoshop by the way, the L*ab tutorial also.

PHXAZCRAIG said:

Is that control in Lightroom 6.14?

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Nope, that's photoshop. But in Lightroom you have a curves adjustement menu. Might work in RGB.

PHXAZCRAIG said:

I can't bring up your link to the tutorial.

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My old account is called Joey_B, if you take a look in the gallery of that you should find it.

PHXAZCRAIG said:

Is that control in Lightroom 6.14?

I can't bring up your link to the tutorial.

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Here a quickie in ACR, basically the same controls LR offers.




the basic settings




zone curve (not really necessary)




red curve (most of the work is done here.




the green curve (minor edit to get the magenta out of the midtones




and buffed up the greens a bti, so that the iridescence shows up a bit more.

That's brilliant! Thanks.