MORE underwater photos questions

loria · Post by **loria** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:15 pm

ok, all you guys have these great photos....they are crisp looking and gorgeous.....
my maiden outing wiht the camera was today and stuff is, well, greenish! i set the camera on Auto- the water wasn't super clear-- but ok....-- should i have used the flash? i really want to get those nice crisp photos.

pmk · Post by **pmk** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:20 pm

All underwater photos need to be processed. Get a cheap version of photoshop elements and use "auto tone". It will clean up the murky green nicely.

pmk

mindehankins · Post by **mindehankins** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:37 pm

Loria, I use a free program from Google, called Picassa, for processing underwater photos. The "I'm feeling lucky" button works amazing, for them. You'll likely find things you didn't even know you photographed!

Coconuts · Post by **Coconuts** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 4:47 pm

loria: A green cast is a common problem with underwater photos, and happens because water rapidly absorbs red light, leaving only greens and blues. One option is to add a small orange-red filter, made to correct for this imbalance. Some cameras have an underwater mode, which sets a custom white balance that will correct the problem. Another solution is to bring a piece of white plastic underwater with you, point the camera at it, and set the white balance. The deeper you go, the greener it gets, but for surface snorkeling and subjects say 8-10 feet down, you can dive down that far once with the white plastic, and set the white balance at the typical subject depth. If your camera can save images in RAW format, color casts can be fixed afterwards, using good image editing software. You can also fiddle the white balance on JPG's, but the results won't be quite as good as if you shot in RAW. One or more flashes is another way to fix the problem, but these want to be off to the side to avoid backscatter, and more powerful than the small on-camera flashes, so that is getting well beyond casual underwater photography. Hope this helps.

When you dive at night, you need to bring the light with you in the form of a bright floodlight, and since this is usually only a few feet from what you are looking at, a whole new world of red and orange coral leaps out, that you would never know was there in the daytime.

All the best,

Kevin

P.S.: A few years ago, I was able to extend a business trip to Australia to spend five days on a liveaboard on the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea. I made a conscious effort to avoid experiencing all of that through a camera viewfinder, and didn't bring any photo gear. Most of the other divers had bulky gear, but didn't really know how to use them. At the end of the trip, they gave me digital copies of their images, and most were poorly composed and very green. The dive boat had a professional underwater videographer, and at the end of the trip he was selling CDs with amazing stills and videos. I got to enjoy the dives, and still came away with great photos and videos.

mit43 · Post by **mit43** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 5:05 pm

Does your camera have an underwater setting? If it does, it will compensate for you. If we forget and leave it on Auto, the pictures are not good.

I have never processed an underwater picture with photo shop or any other software.

jmq · Post by **jmq** » Sat Mar 23, 2013 9:50 pm

If your camera has an underwater setting, use it - that will adjust the white balance to compensate for the overly blue or green look of the shots. Depending on the camera, they still might need further editing as noted below.

If you dont have an UW setting, leave it on Auto and dont use the flash, and dont despair about (or delete) the ones you already shot - you will be amazed that when you run it thru the free software edit tool from Google callled Picasa using their "I'm Feeling Lucky" one button edit tool, it will do a great job correcting the image 9 times out of 10, to the point where fish and other stuff you didnt even know were in the frame will pop out.

All underwater photos have too much blue (or, rather, too less of all the other colors due to absorption by water). Your eyes will compensate when you're underwater but film or digital does not (digital does some but not enough). For someone not familiar with underwater photos and the "blue effect", the first reaction is one of disgust, "The photos are terrible! Everything is a foggy blue or greenish blue." Before throwing them away, run 'em thru Picasa.

michigan girls · Post by **michigan girls** » Sun Mar 24, 2013 1:47 pm

Why have I never tried Picasa before?? After reading this thread I opened up last years snorkel photos, downloaded Picasa and hit "I feel lucky"

Wow, there are seriously things in the photos I didn't know were there. From now on, all my underwater photos will get this treatment as soon as I upload them!

jmq · Post by **jmq** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 10:35 am

Before and after some quick fixes using Picasa:

luv2travel · Post by **luv2travel** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 11:20 am

It's a shame Picassa is only for PC platform. Anything comparable for Macs?

Lydia

mindydaile · Post by **mindydaile** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 11:49 am

Lydia I use Picassa on my Mac. Are you having trouble downloading it?

KTinTX · Post by **KTinTX** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 11:57 am

Wow. I'm going to pull out my D10 and D20 shots from the past few trips and give this a shot. I've always been pretty lazy about post processing and just used the U/W setting and gotten decent results in bright sunlight but pretty crappy in all other light conditions. I've used Picassa before but never on my snorkeling pictures. Guess I have homework tonite! Thanks.

luv2travel · Post by **luv2travel** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:31 pm

"Lydia I use Picassa on my Mac. Are you having trouble downloading it?"

Mindy, when i googled picasa, the download for mac was x'd out. Just did another search and found the Mac download.

Thanks
Lydia

stjchica · Post by **stjchica** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:54 pm

I tried Picasa out last night..Thanks for sharing..Who knew???

luv2travel · Post by **luv2travel** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:55 pm

[quote="jmq"]Before and after some quick fixes using Picasa

jmq, what were the quick fixes you used?

Lydia

jmq · Post by **jmq** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:49 pm

For UW pix under the Wrench icon tab for “basic fixes”: manual crop; I’m Feeling Lucky (does both color correction and contrast correction at the same time, but can over correct) or just Auto Color then the separate sliders under the Sun icon tab for “finer tuning” of contrast etc.

Also under the Paintbrush icon tab for “effects” may use the “Warmify” effect that can be helpful on UW shots.

This is easy photo editing software for dummies, with pretty decent results 95% of the time. The steep learning curve and $$$ cost associated with PhotoShop did not appeal to me.
However, the photo editing software someone here mentioned called Snapseed is pretty cheap and looks pretty nifty and not too hard to use and might be a cool way to bring my images to the next level. I haven’t had a chance to download and work with that yet but am looking forward to trying.

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