Underwater Photo Corrections

[trvo]

Hey All

Earlier on this year I took some holiday snaps underwater, I've managed to improve a few with Lightroom but I feel I haven't gotten the best out of them and was hoping I could get some pointers on what to do next to get some colour back into them.

This set on Flickr contains 4 of my photos, two before and two afters...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38497820@N07/sets/72157621567720704/

Any tips are appreciated.

Cheers - Trev

 

[Cobra]

Underwater shots are "quite subjective" in colour it all depends on how you saw it
at the time
I wouldn't know how to alter them in L/R ( I just can't get on with it)
but opening the small Jpeg in ACR and adjusting the white balance to get a little
of the "blue hue" out then opening in CS3 to adjust the shadows and highlights
then "match colour for brightness and luminance I came up with a couple of options
I guess you would have better results with the large originals though
if you don't like them say so and they're nuked

Yours

My two

 

[trvo]

The colours of the lionfish in nr2 look a lot more realistic - thanks for the suggestions, much appreciated

Cheers - Trev

 

[TheBigYin]

Using CS4 curves adjustment layer and just clicking around at random with the mid-tone eyedropper... not very scientific, but it worked!

Curves came out something like this

 

[Cobra]

The colours of the lionfish in nr2 look a lot more realistic - thanks for the suggestions, much appreciated

Cheers - Trev

No worries

and just clicking around at random with the mid-tone eyedropper...

Ah good I am glad its not just me that does that at times then

 

[TheBigYin]

No worries



Ah good I am glad its not just me that does that at times then

sometime's that's as technical as it needs to get though... I'm a big believer in not complicating things unneccesarily

 

[swanseamale47]

You tend to loose red underwater, I usually add a little red and ajust the colours by eye, trouble is the colours underwater will vary a lot from place to place and how deep you go, theres no hard and fast rule.

 

[trvo]

Thanks for the help guys, much appreciated! Both the lionfish and the photo of me were fairly shallow dives, the one of me is at 8m and the one of the lionfish is at approx 10-15m if I remember rightly.

Cheers - Trev