DoubleDip:
Because I drift dive and my buddies do not take pictures, taking shots "on the fly" is very near and dear. I have personal experience with the difficulties you are talking about.
Your picture is not junk, and as fpoole suggests it can be improved. There is a limit to what any shot can produce and you have to feel the time is worth the effort (ie you really like the shot). Otherwise, put it in the "seconds bin" as Yoda suggests.
Since I am learning PSE3 for the purposes of instruction, I am happy to spend some time seeing what I can do. I played around with your shot a little last night.
I am a believer in the Quick and Easy school of photo manipulation. I cheated and loaded your photo into PSCS where I have a macro (action) that runs the relevant auto correction features (autocolor and autolevels) in various combinations and lets you compare the results. PSE has similar functions and they only marginally improved aspects of the image.
PSE has a Quick Fix edit mode (see p27 of the "Getting Started" book that came bundled with your software). This is great Q&E. I especially like the Smart Fix feature that has worked well on a number of images I have tried it on. Unfortunately, yours was not one of them. The levels and contrast feature under Quick Fix is useless on most UW photos IMO and I would not waste a lot of time with it (different story for the levels feature under Enhance>Adjust Lighting). The color section under Quick Fix can make some pleasing color shifts. It improved parts of your image and worsened others.
A tool you should always try is the Enhance>Adjust Color>Remove Color Cast tool. You use the eyedropper to click on parts of the image that should be white, black or gray (see p32 of Getting Started). The software then shifts the color at the select point to remove color casts there, and the rest of the image shifts with it. My ovreall color correction article explains this in more detail. Click around the picture and sometimes you can solve all your problems with this tool. In your case I got the best result by clicking on the top of the scallop, but this threw a color cast on the shell.
Although the Q&E tools did not get exactly what you want on this image, they can imrove lots of images. This image is not the best "beginners example" because it does not respond well to Q&E. You should apply the Q&E tools first to see if they will help. Don't get frustrated if they don't always work.
As fpoole suggests, more advanced PSE work may improve your image. I will play with it some this week and post my results. Be patient, my brother is in town and I won't have time to play with your image some more for a few days.
---Bob
