Photoshop (Lightroom) techniques for compensating for lack of flash

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Here's an image I took earlier this week:

I'd like to remove the blue cast, get the colors to pop. I have both Photoshop (through work) and Lightroom (home PC that I'm more proficient at). Any suggested for getting the actual color like I had good strobes?

 

[ChuckP]

Do you have the raw file? I'm no expert but can dop a little

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Do you have the raw file? I'm no expert but can dop a little

Unfortunately no. The camera only takes jpegs.

 

[ChuckP]

I

Unfortunately no. The camera only takes jpegs.

I have only been using light room for 6 months or so and am not sure the difference in RAW verses JPEG - what you can and can't do. There is way more than simply getting the white balence adjusted.

I live in Cozumel, it's Eagle Ray season and you can't get close enough really to get light on the rays when you take a pic - the pics look much like yours. You start really twisting knobs on some settings and you can get it better but I have yet to find the magic to equal what these pinche GoPros are putting out!!!!

That is a little different - adjusted white balence, did the auto correct and then reduced the exposure, add texture, clarity and dehaze, play with the tone curve and then added blue to change the water color

 

[1fspeed]

This is what I would have done... Lightroom only, Manual white balanced off the tiny rock on the very bottom center edge of the frame. Selected the water and reduced clarity, selected foreground and added clarity, texture, color and contrast.

The manual white balance was probably the biggest fix - beyond that it's seasoning to taste.

 

[ChuckP]

This is what I would have done... Lightroom only, Manual white balanced off the tiny rock on the very bottom center edge of the frame. Selected the water and reduced clarity, selected foreground and added clarity, texture, color and contrast.

The manual white balance was probably the biggest fix - beyond that it's seasoning to taste.View attachment 775054View attachment 775055

Dude - that's sweet!!! Didn't know about this selecting forground and background stuff!!!

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

This is what I would have done... Lightroom only, Manual white balanced off the tiny rock on the very bottom center edge of the frame. Selected the water and reduced clarity, selected foreground and added clarity, texture, color and contrast.

The manual white balance was probably the biggest fix - beyond that it's seasoning to taste.View attachment 775054View attachment 775055

Oh man that is awesome! Thanks! Though I wasn't as successful at white balancing. Would you mind pointing out the point you selected for the WB? I think for other images, I'll have to do trial and error. I used the brush for the water and played with that.

Here are the mods I made:

I'm overall pleased. Good enough for a slide show to show family and friends.

Dude - that's sweet!!! Didn't know about this selecting forground and background stuff!!!

LR is pretty powerful, and I'm a noob at it. This tip was super helpful.

 

[1fspeed]

This is what I used, but only after tying like a dozen other spots, some of which were nearly as good. Anything grey, white or even black can work. AL80s work quite well... Say you have a shot with your buddy and his tank, at a similar depth from the dive... manual WB on the tank, note the Temp and Tint #s, then manually input them into a scene like this without a good WB target.

 

[hilljo88]

If you go to the HSL/Color section of the Develop module in LR, you can also experiment with the individual color sliders for Saturation and Luminance. You could try to add red/orange/yellow to the image and lessen or remove green/aqua/blue/purple/magenta to get the look you like best. Essentially, the white balance dropper does this for you but uses an averaging algorithm to select the values. You might be able to improve on the white balance dropper for your specific image and artistic taste. You can have fun with post processing but it can become a massive time sink.

 

[Rilelen]

For post-processing (and nearly all UW photography needs post-processing) RAW files are much better - they are uncompressed which means you have much more latitude to do things like adjust exposure and colors, without degrading the image quality by introducing grain or noise.

I keep several presets in Lightroom for different amounts of light and depths, that I use for the first pass at processing, then go back again to fine-tune as others have described above. Once you are deep enough, there's no "color" being captured by the camera to recover in post-processing unless you are using lights/strobes; for those photos, converting to B&W can be a good solution for removing the blue colorcast. If you don't have your own presets, try the recommended ones - click on "Presets" (in the exposure panel, if you're on a desktop), then explore through the recommended ones.

Martin Edge's "Underwater Photography" book has a great section on post-processing!

Quick pass at your photo attached - I changed the red and blue point curves, and turned up saturation on the warm colors; grabbed the background and lowered exposure and reduced noise to keep the deeper blue background.