Snorkeling photos

[Testudo]

Not too shabby for relative first-timers . Your album makes me wonder why I never snorkeled the Keys. The only real advice I can provide is to get a ginonormous :shocked2: memory card and take tons and tons of pictures. Then, when reviewing all your shots try and remember how you took the ones that came out "best". In my case (and I am truly a rocket scientist), I have found that the closer I can get to my subject the better my shots are. I try to use any zoom, even optical, as little as possible.

 

[Dave C]

Amy, you have some nice photos from south Florida. I have long wanted to go to Dry Tortugas. One thing that will improve many of your photos GREATLY is to do a simple "auto fix" in most any photo editing program. This almost always improves the color for most snorkeling photos. (I have given this advice to many people.) I tried this on your photo of the coral head with the baitfish, and the colors just popped out. Give it a try.

I am also on flickr, and I made a couple of comments there, too.

 

[Testudo]

Dave C had some good advice about using a program to enhance your underwater images (if you don't already). I ran the image he referenced through Picasa's "I'm Feeling Lucky" filter and here's what it looks like vs the original.

Have not found a good free program for enhancing underwater video yet.

 

[snorkelnow]

Dave C and Testudo, *very* cool enhancement! I had tried w/ the software that came with the camera and got maybe half way by fiddling with all of the brightness/contrast/yada/yada as you did with what sounds like an auto filter. I will get picassa and give it a try with some of my images.

The "auto correct" that came with my camera was not too impressive, other than Picassa, are there other good ones for underwater correction for non-professional graphics artists (free or pay)?

Thanks!
Amy

Here is the original image:

original brain coral image by huskyaddict, on Flickr

 

[Testudo]

I have found Picasa to be the easiest free image enhancement option since it has a one click out fix option. I have an older version of Jasc Paint Shop Pro ($) (I think the company was since purchased by Adobe or someone) that had some good and easy to use image enhancement features as well (great for pet pictures and fixing 'blue eye" in dogs...)

But now I pretty much just use Picasa, because it is so easy to use in bulk and produces pretty good results.

I did try enhancing the last image of the soft corals and it was not nearly as dramatic as the above example. So the software that came with the camera does help clean things up some.

 

[snorkelnow]

Hi All,

Here is another example. It looks like the two pass (hand adjustments then auto filter) did the best job (IMO). The images are embedded below and I grouped them as a set on flickr in case you want to see the progression as a slide show.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34695815@N04/sets/72157626237540846/with/5514579015/

Regards,
Amy

Original "purple antler" photo:

biscane_bay_and_j_penny_white_sands_panasonic 025 by huskyaddict, on Flickr

Original processed with Picassa "feeling lucky":

purple_antler_picassa_lucky by huskyaddict, on Flickr

Original processed by hand with the camera software (brightness, sharpness, hue..)

day_8_biscayne_nat_park_1 by huskyaddict, on Flickr

Hand edited image run through Picassa "feeling Lucky"

purple_antler_hand_edit_then_picassa by huskyaddict, on Flickr

 

[Testudo]

As you continue to edit, you'll find the auto-option is better at some things vs others. But only you can determine which end results looks most like what you observed.

All these pictures are making me anxious to get back in the water....

 

[Dave C]

Amy,
Just like Testudo, I still use Jasc, an old program no longer available that only cost $30 when I bought it. (This was the quick and easy program I used to verify that your brain coral pic could be dramatically improved with one keystroke, i.e. the "quick fix" command in the program.) The auto correction feature in Photo Elements (called something like "one step photo fix") gives very similar results to Jasc for snorkeling photos (usually Photo Elements does slightly better). However, Photo Elements costs $80. I also have Corel Paint Shop Pro (another $80 program), but its auto-correction feature does not yield good results for snorkeling photos. I have not used Picasa, but I do recommend Photo Elements to you. Photo Elements has a lot of whistles and bells and can get fairly complicated (It's basically a dumbed-down version of the very complicated Photo Shop software), but if you just use the simple stuff in the program it will help you a lot.

 

[snorkelnow]

Dave,

Thanks for the feedback. I will try out elements. I have not had such good luck so far with the autocorrect (panasonic software or picassa) with some of my images. I think it is working better for images that were taken with pretty good light (no heavy blue overtones). Here is a little pic I snapped from a video clip. It is very blue. I tried just with picassa feeling lucky and then fiddled around with it manually. Here is what I came up with for this photo. Could you try my original image (below) with the "auto fix" on your favorite programs and see how it does? The original brain coral image that I posted was already hand edited. Do you remember if you grabbed that one or the "original original" that I posted later when you did your first experiment? The "original original" is more murky.

Thanks!
Amy

Original:

parrot_fish_lateral by huskyaddict, on Flickr

Picassa "Feeling Lucky"

parrot_fish_lateral_picassa_lucky by huskyaddict, on Flickr

Picassa with hand adjustments

parrot_fish_lateral_pic1-picnic_pic3 by huskyaddict, on Flickr

 

[Dave C]

Since I just posted a couple of replies here, I thought I might as well also post a couple of snorkeling photos from southern Baja California Mexico that I recently put on flickr:

Yellowtail surgeonfish near Cabo San Lucas taken in Nov. 2002 on just the second day I ever used a digital camera underwater. Previously, I had used film cameras underwater, but the pictures were almost always crummy. Digital opened a whole new world for me. The camera was only 3 mgp. (Click on the photo to view in a little larger size - it looks better. I don't like the way ScubaBoard is now automatically re-sizing images in posts because the images may look degraded.)

Another photo from Baja (Cabo Pulmo) of a green moray in April 2009. I am heading back to Cabo Pulmo in a few weeks and can't wait!

For all my snorkeling photos, go here: Flickr: Hawkfish's Photostream