August 23, 2015
I was working on the computer this morning and an underwater photo from Kadavu, Fiji came up on our desktop slideshow. Here’s what it looked like originally…
The reason this particular photo interested me is that I’ve learned some new Photoshop techniques that work great on underwater photos – made possible by the new, and now affordable, Photoshop CC. This photo seemed like a challenging candidate.
Here’s the after…
I’ll put up a complete tutorial in the near future, but as a hint:
1. Dehaze filter in camera raw filter, as well as the other tweaks possible there like clarity and vibrance. (Here’s a YouTube video.)
2. A levels mask layer. Here’s the trick there: Alt-Click on the auto button, then select the “Enhance Per Channel Contrast” box. You can also select the “Snap Neutral Midtones” box if it makes the image look better. (Here’s a great video tutorial from Lynda.com. If you haven’t seen Lynda.com before, they have amazing tutorials for just about everything from cake decorating to brain surgery!)
3. Then in the levels dialog, select and adjust individually the red, green, and blue midpoint slider to taste.
4. Add a Black & White adjustment layer, set the blending mode to Luminosity, and adjust the individual colors to taste. (Here’s a YouTube video.)
5. (I didn’t do this, but probably should have as my “after” image looks a little over-sharpened and over-processed.) I usually dial the adjustments back just a tiny bit. Before I start processing images, I make a layer copy of the original (ctrl-j). After processing, I adjust the transparency of the adjusted layer to dial the adjustments back.
Additionally, I cropped the image and used Photoshop’s amazing healing tool to add a little head-room above the coral in the new frame.
I don’t feel guilty using Photoshop to enhance images. One: this isn’t photojournalism, and two: the result looks more like it did in real life (after all, we’re only using a point-and-shoot UW camera – the Olympus Tough, with the flash turned off).
This isn’t as hard as it sounds. Besides, what else have you got to do out here? Scrimshaw?
By the way, I said Photoshop is now affordable. It used to be over $1000 for the full program. Now you can “lease” it for $120 per year, and that includes all the updates you can eat. It’s called Photoshop CC (creative cloud). Don’t let the cloud thing throw you. You don’t have to have online access to use it. You do need to let it phone home every 4 months (with the annual payment arrangement). -Rich
