Editing STJ photos with Picasa?

[Jo Ann - VA]

[quote][/quote]from linne: Is that the editing or have any of you seen a vividly coloured turtle?


I've seen vividly colored turtles after too many pain killers!

[RickG]

Here's an example I cooked up a while ago for "Bob" who I beleive is half of Bob&Anita.

Before:



After Photoshop Auto-Level:



The colors are real, they have not been retouched. What has happened is that the contrast between the colors that are present has been increased. Adding more color takes a lot more work. What may happen is that a false white and a false black can be introduced due to the way auto-level works.

Cheers, RickG

[California Girl]

I *think* that the underwater setting on most cameras changes the white balance setting to one that better matches the color "white" under water. That is, shifts the spectrum so that the colors appear properly.

Well, if my camera is trying to adjust the white balance, it fails miserably! All of my underwater pix look exactly like your first turtle example. If I have my camera set on "auto", then I can fix it to look like the 2nd turtle picture. But if I set my camera to "underwater", the picture still looks like the top one, only I can't fix it after the fact. I only have a Canon SD400, so maybe when I upgrade to a fancier model, maybe that underwater setting will work better.

[linne]

Hi Rick!

It's amazing what auto-level can do. But still I cannot understand it. I have never seen a turtle with the colours as showed in your nr. 2 picture.

Have you?? Without too many painkillers as Jo Ann says??

Linne

[RickG]

I *think* that the underwater setting on most cameras changes the white balance setting to one that better matches the color "white" under water. That is, shifts the spectrum so that the colors appear properly.

Well, if my camera is trying to adjust the white balance, it fails miserably! All of my underwater pix look exactly like your first turtle example. If I have my camera set on "auto", then I can fix it to look like the 2nd turtle picture. But if I set my camera to "underwater", the picture still looks like the top one, only I can't fix it after the fact. I only have a Canon SD400, so maybe when I upgrade to a fancier model, maybe that underwater setting will work better.

??? My Canon SD410 does not have an underwater setting. You could try a manual white balance. This is something I want to do some experiments on in November.

Cheers, RickG

[RickG]

Hi Rick!

It's amazing what auto-level can do. But still I cannot understand it. I have never seen a turtle with the colours as showed in your nr. 2 picture.

Have you?? Without too many painkillers as Jo Ann says??

Linne

Well, water filters a lot of the blues. Auto-levels just increases the vividness of what's there. It gets pretty technical, but I would not say that the colors are absolutely like what you would see either in the water or on land. Also, the amount of blue that gets filtered increases the deeper you go.

Cheers, RickG

[California Girl]

??? My Canon SD410 does not have an underwater setting.

Awww, c'mon Rick...are you sure? Why would mine have an UW setting and not yours? That's weird!

[RickG]

??? My Canon SD410 does not have an underwater setting.

Awww, c'mon Rick...are you sure? Why would mine have an UW setting and not yours? That's weird!

Actually, I have the S410, which is a different memory format. Looking at old reviews, it has presets for daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent, fluorescent H or custom white balance.

I want to experiment with setting the white balance underwater.

Cheers, RickG

[jmq]

I find I use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” aka the Picasa version of auto level adjust most effectively with to color correct the underwater shots. The “Warmify” button under effects can also help that. Like Rick said, it has to do with the wavelengths of visible light absorbed by the water.

I’ve found that fiddling with the white balance setting on my older Canon Powershot had minimal effect, and also heard elsewhere that, like CA Girl said, using the underwater setting on some cameras makes software correction more difficult.

I’ve also found the built in flash on point n shoots are pretty useless underwater (unless you are REAL close to something) and in fact, will illuminate any particles in the water. The pro style set ups use big ass external strobe flashes for those brilliantly colored shots you see in magazines. Us amateurs have to rely on strong midday sunshine.

The other button I use a lot on Picasa is the “Straighten” function. Crooked horizons is a pet peeve of mine, plus you know you can take other weird or low angle horizontal or vertical shots and fix it later using this function. “fill light” is also handy to bring out shadowed areas, and the “graduated tint” under the effects tab is handy for shots that have a too bright sky with say a dark valley below.

[Cid]

Rick G....Thanks for the geeky explanation. I was trying to figure out how to explain it simply. You did well..Gotta love Photoshop!

[Teresa_Rae]

I've been finding that every picture is different...some look worse with "I'm feeling lucky" and some look best with a combination of several adjustments...I'd say that the "I'm feeling lucky" option works best about half the time or so for my camera.