It's CS5 I have, so I need to make the best of it.
Never heard anybody extol elements over CS before
Correcting Colour Cast
- Thread starter Tafflad
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
It's CS5 I have, so I need to make the best of it.
Never heard anybody extol elements over CS before
DevonDiver
N/A
Drop me a PM with your email
Have done .... Thnx
eddyunderwater
Guest
Any reason why you aren't taking a custom white balance?
Basic 101 UW Color, using no strobes.
It makes your reds easier to recall if you first attach a UR pro red filter, then do a custom WB at the depth you are shooting, then you don't have to do much if any cast correction... Do you even have a slate to white balance on? The best slate on the market is the Amphibico #2 Blue. For Video and Stills, I get saturated beautiful images, with little or no effort, and if not lighting this in any way it is not complicated at all. What YOU are doing in post is falsifying the pixels which can't look as good as if you shot it right from the the beginning. Plus you can't batch correct with accuracy if any of the lighting conditions change [which you can from underwater if you keep adjusting WB to suit the ambient light] - easy!
Then on post : Adjusting colour casts for UW is as simple as using the Hue and saturation tool on a separate adjustment layer, either before and/or after some levels on an adjustment layer, which, if you know how to throw in a mask for difficult sun situations is all you need. If you shoot at 100ft with no red filter, no custom wb, you will not get real colours back from any method to work on in post. You need two things: plenty of LIGHT and WB set at depth.
Work the leading colours ie blue or green in H+S / then adjust for balance on Levels, noting the histogram's info:
This shows the Shadow Mid and Highlights, for R G and B, - work the sliders towards the edges of the histogram in each R, G and B inside levels and dont clip into the histogram or your contrast levels will be out.
Well, firstly without doing any post work I think you should try WB adjustment to a custom manual setting. If you dont have a slate as I described you can use a white slate, but it won't bring your saturation out, just as the grey slate is the same, but try white to start. Pippeting the white areas is IMHO hit and miss.
here is the slate: Cases & Accessories :: Colour & White Balance Charts - Amphibico Underwater video Housing Store
Good luck, happy shooting
Eddy
Basic 101 UW Color, using no strobes.
It makes your reds easier to recall if you first attach a UR pro red filter, then do a custom WB at the depth you are shooting, then you don't have to do much if any cast correction... Do you even have a slate to white balance on? The best slate on the market is the Amphibico #2 Blue. For Video and Stills, I get saturated beautiful images, with little or no effort, and if not lighting this in any way it is not complicated at all. What YOU are doing in post is falsifying the pixels which can't look as good as if you shot it right from the the beginning. Plus you can't batch correct with accuracy if any of the lighting conditions change [which you can from underwater if you keep adjusting WB to suit the ambient light] - easy!
Then on post : Adjusting colour casts for UW is as simple as using the Hue and saturation tool on a separate adjustment layer, either before and/or after some levels on an adjustment layer, which, if you know how to throw in a mask for difficult sun situations is all you need. If you shoot at 100ft with no red filter, no custom wb, you will not get real colours back from any method to work on in post. You need two things: plenty of LIGHT and WB set at depth.
Work the leading colours ie blue or green in H+S / then adjust for balance on Levels, noting the histogram's info:
This shows the Shadow Mid and Highlights, for R G and B, - work the sliders towards the edges of the histogram in each R, G and B inside levels and dont clip into the histogram or your contrast levels will be out.
Well, firstly without doing any post work I think you should try WB adjustment to a custom manual setting. If you dont have a slate as I described you can use a white slate, but it won't bring your saturation out, just as the grey slate is the same, but try white to start. Pippeting the white areas is IMHO hit and miss.
here is the slate: Cases & Accessories :: Colour & White Balance Charts - Amphibico Underwater video Housing Store
Good luck, happy shooting
Eddy
eddyunderwater
Guest
Oh yes and you should be using RAW files too if you can- the latitude of the adjustments is far superior than a jpeg which is already processed.
Eddy
Eddy
Often can't get a decent white balance .. at depth (25m+) and it is a fiddly task to carry out, multiple steps ... by which time photo opportunity is often lost.
I know the benefits of white balance - just most of time don't use it.
On previuous camera I used to have a red filter ...(Olympus CW8080) ... although the loss of light through them is an issue.
My camera does not support RAW ... so question does not arise.
I used to use RAW on previous camera.
kevmiami
Registered
Just started working with underwater photography and am very happy with basically single-click results I'm getting from NIK Software's Lightroom complete plug-in collection ($299). Purchased for other reasons, but working very well for underwater pics.
You can clearly get similar results from manually tweaking photos, but I never seem to have enough time or patience to go through and clean up a series of photos. I have tried a number of different plug-ins, collections, actions, etc., but this seems to be my easiest path. My camera only shoots jpeg, so that's the breaks right now - but certainly good enough until I get much better at buoyancy control, etc.
It's a very natural and quick flow if you want to bang out a series of photos. It is truly unreal the amount of detail you can recover from unadjusted photos. Cheers, Kevin.
You can clearly get similar results from manually tweaking photos, but I never seem to have enough time or patience to go through and clean up a series of photos. I have tried a number of different plug-ins, collections, actions, etc., but this seems to be my easiest path. My camera only shoots jpeg, so that's the breaks right now - but certainly good enough until I get much better at buoyancy control, etc.
- Open file in lightroom, select edit copy:
- One-click noise reduction in NIK's Define 2.0,
- Almost one-click color correction in NIK's Color Efex Pro 3.0 (Select: Pro Contrast - this will typically tend to color correct most of foreground, leaving background somewhat unadjusted - nice natural look).
- One-click sharpening in NIK's Sharpener Pro 3.0
- Final 60 seconds or so of final touch-up in lightroom, tweaking highlights & shadows.
- If enlarging, use OnOne's Perfect Resize plugin (expensive - but very high quality).
It's a very natural and quick flow if you want to bang out a series of photos. It is truly unreal the amount of detail you can recover from unadjusted photos. Cheers, Kevin.
eddyunderwater
Guest
Well, ok, no raw. C'mon you can do a custom white balance. I can relate to low vis and murky water- did my DM course in the murkiest water of Southampton and Portsmouth Naval base, and to do that you need a slate and WB preset ability on your camera, which most cameras do, which camera do you have?
Similar threads
