Photoshop baby steps.

[PapaBob]

Kim:

Do not underestimate what you have been able to do with your picture. You have done a great job with what you call "limited skills". I have worked a lot of underwater images in Photoshop, any yours was not easy to work with. The red channel was dead and could not be reconstructed. Shifting the color of an image is not easy without introducing artifacts. Read and follow Steve's post carefully. He is giving you good advice.

You were right to clone out the remoras (Steve, I didn't really notice them until I read your post). I tried to work them into a pleasing contrast with the Manta, but ended up cloning them out also.

I used a different approach than Steve. I set up the manta in its own layer and worked it using a multiply layer, curves adjustment and a sharpen after I merged the layers I used to work on the Manta.

I duplicated the original (background) layer and color corrected it in the individual RGB channels in levels. I used it to make two "water" layers, one of which I blurred to remove backscatter and artifacts, and the other I sharpened a little to enhance the surface reflections Lisa liked. The three layers were then blended with masks.

You would not be able to do most of these repairs in PSE. In fact, your results were so good for what I know about PSE, I would really be interested in your steps.

Alcina's comment is well taken. It is not easy to make major adjustments and keep a Photorealistic feel. Sometimes it takes a lot of "fine tuning" to get a natural feel, and you have to feel the image is worth the effort.

This is what I was able to patch together with limited time and image resolution. If I can help you try some alternative adjustments, let me know. Your first efforts were definately headed in the right direction.

---Bob

 

[Kim]

You would not be able to do most of these repairs in PSE. In fact, your results were so good for what I know about PSE, I would really be interested in your steps.

I made two layers at first and on one erased everything except the manta (this is probably the main reason that Alcina got her feeling of 'unreal' as I did it at a very high zoom to get the exact manta outline). Then I played with the levels settings trying to find the best 'set black point' - this comes out very dark at first but if you play with the input sliders and reduce the range you come out with my result.
The second 'water' layer I simply cleaned up by cloning any spots out of it - as well as the two Cobias (they are not actually Remoras). To improve the spread of water color and darken it at depth a bit I made a third empty layer into a graduation mask using a sample of the surface water color for the light end and picking a much darker blue for the other. I played with the opacities to try to add the tint without it appearing too unnatural - although justleesa caught me red handed so I went back and redid the water layer leaving the reflections in and changing the opacity a bit more.

Oh yes - I arranged the layers so that the mant was at the front and the graduation mask at the back.

I didn't actually merge the layers at all and just saved copies directly to JPG to post. I'm wondering if by merging the layers and blurring the edges of the manta slightly I might be able to reduce the hard outline adge which I suspect might be the main reason it looks a little artificial.

By the way - if anyone wants the original RAW file to play with send me your email addie in a PM. The file is about 7 Mb. If your email won't accept an attachment that big I can also supply a Gmail invite and send it to the Gmail account.

 

[PapaBob]

Kim:

Thank you for sharing your steps. IMO making a "knockout" of the manta (or working on a selection for that matter) is perfectly acceptabe Photoshop for many images. The problem with these methods is that you are relegated to History (in PSE "UndoHistory") to fix the image as you go. If it looks too "cut and paste" then you end up doing a lot of work to perfect the knockout or selection. If you close out the file (even to the PSD format), you lose the history states. Some of the "gurus" call this "destructive photoshop" because you are tossing out pixels you might later need, and actually ban the eraser tool from their courses.

You have CS, and once you get comfortable with it you will learn to love a feature called "layer masks". You will not find it difficult to learn since you are already familiar with layers. The layer mask lets you block out or reveal parts of the layer, meaning you can go back and adjust the correction by making changes to the mask. For example, in the quick mask I painted for the manta, I notice that the underside is irregular (a little sloppy painting on my part). With a knock out, I might have to undo a few steps, or start over if the history states are gone. With a layer mask I can go back and adjust the mask. I can save masks in the channels Palette, load them as selections, apply filters to them (like a light blur to soften hard edges) .... lots of neat stuff. You can use a type of mask called a "clipping group" or "Clipping Layer" in PSE, but it is more difficult and not nearly as flexable as layer masks in PS. Just to remember to save a PSD file which preserves your layers and masks for future work on the image.

Nice use of the Gradient Layer BTW. Rather than sample color, you can create a gradient adjustment layer (black to white, black to transparent, or white to transparent) and use it to lighten or darken the color of the image by setting the layer blend mode to Overlay or Soft Light. I will try to give an example of this at a future date.

I tried a few "tricks" on the manta and did not even try the basic levels adjustment. Bravo! Great reminder that Quick and Easy or the old KISS method is always preferable when it works. Again, real nice work on a difficult image.

---Bob

 

[KidK9]

Those dont look like baby steps. I've been playing with PS for awhile, and what you have done is great work. Keep it up.

 

[justleesa]

Well done Bob!