How would you Edit this?

[alijtaylor]

Hi
The highlight of a dive on the GBR from Port Douglas was a quartet of cuttlefish around a wee bromie. They loked for all the world like flying pigs..

The attached was taken with a Canon Power Shot 50 at 1/500th apeture 7.1. No flash. I only have Photoshop Elements 2 and I have two problems.

Fistly using layers and levels I really struggle to get more realisitic colour back in. No I wasn't shooting raw, at home I need flash for everything and I have never used raw..

Secondly what would you do with the second cuttlefish in the background? I have tried lightening it up but it still looks very blob like.

Any and all suggestions welcome

Thank you

Alison

 

[H2Andy]

this is a "quick fix" with Photoshop

do these colors remotely resemble reality?

 

[alijtaylor]

Hi Andy
Definitely better than I could do either with auto enhance or levels. I think it is a little too red in places but a marked improvement, thanks.
Alison

 

[diversteve]

Hi Andy
Definitely better than I could do either with auto enhance or levels. I think it is a little too red in places but a marked improvement, thanks.
Alison

This is what Kodak's Digital ROC (Color Correction) filter thinks is right.

 

[PapaBob]

Hi Alison:

I have full version Photoshop, and deleted my version of PSE2 a while ago. Although I loaded PSE3 for my wife to use (she likes the calendar feature), I have not played with it much.

Your cuttlefish image has good information and little noise in all three color channels (Red, Green and Blue). This usually means it will respond well to one of the automatic adjustment commands. In fact, Autolevels worked quite nicely on this image.

Below is a composite of some of the adjustments I played with. If you have access to or a friend with full version photoshop, you might give them a try. I have a posted action in the articles section which quickly runs through various automatic adjustment options. You pick what you like and work from there. Unfortunately, actions (ie scripts or macros) is not available in PSE.

The first image shows the autolevels adjustment. The second is a Mandrake Autolevels adjustment. Usually I only use the Mandrake method to repair bad Red information in the image (due to depth and lack of strobe coverage) but your image responded nicely to this adjustment. The next two images are tweaks of the autolevels adjustment using the Selective Color and Color Balance features to remove some of the Cyan color cast in the background.

OBTW, when I loaded PSE3 I noticed that it is much more powerful than PSE2. The cost was about $80 at my local Costco, well worth the price to upgrade. Full version Photoshop is pricey and takes a while to learn. If you do a lot of photography (especially the UW variety) I think it is well worth the price. The current version is PSCS2. Prior versions (PS7 and PSCS) should be available on Ebay at more reasonable prices (I have not checked recently).

Hope this helps some.

—Bob

 

[Kim]

Hi Alison,
Everyone has given you advice for the colour levels that should work reasonably well. I have a specific tip for the second cuttlefish. Use your lasso tool to trace the second cuttlefish outline. You should then be able to bring it out a lot better using the brightness slider in adjustments. I very quickly did it in PSE3 just to see what was there but haven't really had enough time to produce a 'finished' version. It looked like it would produce a reasonable result if done carefully though.

 

[justleesa]

I too would like to take a try at this one but won't have a chance until Tuesday...:bawling:. Like what you have done with it so far.

Alison, which one is closest to how it really was?

 

[KidK9]

That's a cool shot one way or another.

 

[diversteve]

I've never seen one of these, so someone who has(Alison?): What's the real color?

Alison: I'd remove the second cuttlefish, there's not really enough of it there to be of interest and it distracts from the first one. If you select it with the lasso, delete it and then use the clone tool to replace the background, it should be possible to make it look like it was never there - remove his shadow too...

Since there's almost a straight line down the beak of the larger one, it would probably delete very cleanly.

 

[jakubson]

This is how the Roxio Photosuite7 did with Auto tint correction. You just point to an area of the photo that should be "white" and click.