Help with Editing in Lightroom

[clangsner]

I currently am shooting RAW with an Olympus TG-6 in the Olympus PT-059 underwater case.  I do not shoot with strobes but will use my underwater flashlight to give extra light on what I am shooting.

Does anyone have any Lightroom process that they use to reduce the blue and green colour casts and return some actual colours to the photos?

 

[Dave_Hicks]

5 minutes ago, clangsner said:

I currently am shooting RAW with an Olympus TG-6 in the Olympus PT-059 underwater case.  I do not shoot with strobes but will use my underwater flashlight to give extra light on what I am shooting.

Does anyone have any Lightroom process that they use to reduce the blue and green colour casts and return some actual colours to the photos?

 

You can adjust the white balance in lightroom pretty easily and may get some improved images. This is works best if the shots were made in no more than 20 feet of water with lots of natural light. Beyond that, you really should start looking at add a single strobe. A Backscatter MF 1 or 2, or an Inon 220 might be your best entry level options.

[Chris Ross]

There are various ways to correct colour in lightroom the most basic being colour temperature and tint adjustments.  Colour temperature is blue-yellow and tint is magenta - green balance.  So shifting to yellow removes blue and to magenta removes green. 

The torch needs to be surprisingly bright as it needs to overpower ambient light, the best way to increase its impact is to have it much closer to the subject.  The ultimate solution though is adding a strobe, which is way more powerful than a torch.

[Mark Don]

Using presets that I downloaded from Brent Durrand really helped me improve my use of Lightroom and like he says are a great starting point to build your edits from, I wish I had found presets earlier 

https://tutorials.brentdurand.com/free-lightroom-underwater-photo-presets/#:~:text=Adobe Lightroom is the most,to streamline your editing workflow.

[Buddha]

4 hours ago, Mark Don said:

Using presets that I downloaded from Brent Durrand really helped me improve my use of Lightroom and like he says are a great starting point to build your edits from, I wish I had found presets earlier 

https://tutorials.brentdurand.com/free-lightroom-underwater-photo-presets/#:~:text=Adobe Lightroom is the most,to streamline your editing workflow.

I’ve seen that he has these but have never tried them. I know he shoots a canon. Are you also using a canon and getting the canon color? I shoot a Sony and didn’t know if it would work well generically. 

[Mark Don]

No just using a TG6 and a pair of Symbiosis SS-2's but his presets have really helped, it costs nothing to download them and try them out

[1fspeed]

I often find that getting good color in Lightroom is tough.  Lots of WB adjustments that I'm never thrilled with. In Lightroom using a custom white balance off something neutral in the frame works wonders. I've also painted my fins with a rubberized grey material that I occasionally snap a photo of to later establish a baseline WB in LR.  For video I use a dedicated grey card.

[Tom Kline]

Looks like a great idea. I bought white fins for the same purpose but they quickly got red stains on them when diving Hawaii. Plus forgetting to snap a pic with them in it.

One trick is to have subjects that are not colored such as black or white. One can use the eyedropper tool to read the RGB values in LR and adjust the WB accordingly. Note that UW shots might look a tad more natural if the B value is greater than the R and G values. Try to get them closer to equal for subjects closest to the lens. I do this with salmon that are often black and white in the head area. For example adult Sockeye Salmon have a white lower jaw.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Tom Kline

[Chris Ross]

Whatever you are doing in the way of a custom white balance or shooting a grey card for later reference it is important to have the neutral object photographed in the same light as the subject and if you are using a strobe or a video light it needs to be at the same distance.  So for a TG-6 a small grey/white card you can photograph is probably better than fins as you can easily shoot it from much closer.

[Ashok Menon]

Hello. I use an external drive in LR CC to manage my photos. Upon importing, it seems a few photos were directly from the SD card and now kissing in LR. Do I need to delete those photos from LR or can I tell LR to use the new photo location? I can seem to do that, but only one photo at a time. Is there a way to bulk adjust the photo location? Thanks.  

[TimG]

Hi Ashok

 

I use LR Classic which is slightly different I think but my suggestion would be: if you still have the file(s) on the SD card, delete the version in LR and then re-copy them from the SD card to LR using LR Import.

 

Or, If you know where the image is on your external HD, you can, as you have seen, point LR to it and LR will then change the location of the picture on its database. I think you could batch move these by going into the grid view, selecting the images, right clicking and then Go To Folder which will show their location in LR. You can then drag them where you want. Obviously though if they are in different folders to stat with, batch moving may not be feasible. What you don't want to do is move their location outside of LR. LR then gets lost.

 

I'm not sure if that helps or not!