Jurgen

Hello From Austria, and a big welcome :)

Hi @Gmsalterego , Thanks for the info and you miss anything or something you don't like about your workflow?

Hi, I'm curious how you edit your underwater photos and videos: - What are you using? Lightroom, Capture One, RapidRAW, Davinci Resolve, something else? - What annoys you about your workflow? - What's missing? Anything you wish your software could do for underwater shots? - What do you love about your setup and would never give up? Quick bit about me: I've used Capture One and Lightroom for years, and now I'm building my own editing app just for divers and underwater shooters. I want it to tackle the stuff that really bugs people. So any input is welcome, even small gripes or half-baked ideas. Thanks!

Hi, I have already done some additional tests. There are two videos on the page: -> https://depthlight-site-c9a456.gitlab.io/depth.html#video One is a 3D Strobe · one light, placed and moved live, the other video shows Static Light · two lights, strobe arm, diffuser, and light color Its still not where I want to go but I think it opens some doors already definitely have to try a few things more. What you think so far? @humu9679 , @John Liddiard , @Klaus , @Grantmac

@Klaus I was thinking about this already. This should be actually not that hard. I will give it a try when I have time would be great if you could provide me any image.

Welcome @nickrileyuk

Thanks @TimG , @RxSub , @humu9679

Thanks @humu9679 Jpg, raw. Good quality not so good everything can help. Thanks again and best regards

Thank you so much @humu9679

I think there’s an important distinction here between AI-assisted tools and generative AI. A subject mask that identifies something already present in the photograph is quite different from generating, removing or inventing content. At least, that’s my opinion.

Thanks Craig, I really appreciate that perspective. I actually agree with you on the point about the look and the challenge of capturing the image on the dive. I don’t see this as a replacement for that — if anything, I’d still prefer to get the lighting right in camera whenever possible. What interests me is the situation where you couldn’t get the shot you wanted on the dive, whether because of the amount of gear, the position of a wreck, limited visibility, or simply because you didn’t have a strobe with you. And I think you’re right that the “strobe look” is more than just adding brightness or recovering colour. The direction, falloff, shadows and contrast are a big part of what makes an underwater-lit image look the way it does. That’s actually what I’m trying to explore with this project. I’m also curious how far modern sensors and computational photography have already taken us. Maybe the result will turn out to be useful only in certain situations — or maybe there are some things that simply can’t be reconstructed convincingly. Finding that boundary is probably the most interesting part for me. Let’s find out. @humu9679

Thanks so much @Grantmac I will try to send them to my prototype App and will see where it shines and where if have to fix things. I will use them also for my strobe prototype and will keep you updated how things are going. Thanks again 😊

Thanks @John Liddiard for the really helpful tip regarding the strobe position — I’ll definitely keep that in mind. I’d also love to have some proper RAW material to work with, but unfortunately for this project I have to work with some old and rather poor GoPro footage from this wreck. 😄 I’ll keep working on it and hopefully get better results with each iteration. There’s still a long way to go, but I think it’s heading in an interesting direction. I tried to combine the automatic and strobe output and just blended them quickly by 50/50 (strobe still the same)

Hi everyone, @John Liddiard @OneYellowTang this is one of my internal tests. I’m still very early in the development, so there’s obviously a long way to go. Unfortunately, the source material was a single frame from a 1080p GoPro video — not exactly the best starting point. But maybe that makes it interesting as well, since it could help reveal the limitations of the approach quite early. Of course, after such a short development and testing period, I’m not expecting miracles yet. But for one of the first tests, I think it might be heading in the right direction. What do you think?

@John Liddiard Thanks, that's a very helpful way of looking at it. Every bit of input in this discussion is a big help to me, so I really appreciate it. I agree that the 3D reconstruction is probably the hardest part. A depth map can tell me where the visible surfaces are, but it doesn't really tell me what is behind them. That's why I want to be quite careful with things like cast shadows for now — a wrong shadow could easily make the result look artificial. I'm also with you on the light intensity, colour and water conditions. I want to see how far I can take things like distance, angle, light path through the water, turbidity, etc., rather than simply changing brightness and colour. And I think @OneYellowTang made a very good point about colour. A virtual light source obviously can't recover colour information that the camera never captured. If the red information is completely gone, it's gone. But if there is still some information left, perhaps additional simulated light can make better use of it. That's really the experiment I want to run: not trying to invent missing information with AI, but seeing how far I can get using the information that is actually present in the photograph and a reasonably realistic light model. Let's see how far I can take it. 🙂

Welcome Thomas 🙂

Welcome suds 🐠

@OneYellowTang Thanks, this discussion actually gets very close to where I want to take the idea next. I agree that simply brightening an image with a fuzzy mask is not really the interesting part. That is possible manually today. The reason I am interested in the depth map is that I want the light to behave more like an actual light source: its position, distance to the subject, angle, beam and attenuation through the water should all matter. A subject 1 meter from the virtual strobe should not receive the same light as something 10 meters away, even if both happen to be inside the same mask. And I think the point about color is especially important. I am not trying to claim that a mathematical model can magically recover red information that the camera never recorded. If the signal is completely gone, the original color is simply not recoverable from that image alone. I do not want to solve that by having AI guess what the coral or wreck should look like. But there is an interesting distinction: a virtual strobe is not necessarily trying to reconstruct the missing ambient light. It is simulating a new light source that was not present when the photo was taken. If we know where that light is, how far it travels through the water, its spectrum and how it hits the surface, we can calculate the additional light contribution and apply it to the information that is actually present in the photograph. So rather than asking “What color should this object have?”, I am more interested in asking “What would happen to this photograph if a real strobe had been placed here?” Of course, there are hard limits. If the original image contains absolutely no usable information about a surface or its color, I do not want to invent it. But if there is still texture and some spectral information in the image, a physically modelled additional light source may be able to do considerably more than simply brighten the pixels. That is actually where I am heading with the next version: depth and geometry, camera-to-subject distance, strobe-to-subject distance, surface orientation, wavelength-dependent water attenuation and a physically parameterized light source. The goal is not to create a particular look, but to see how far we can get toward a photorealistic result without generating anything that was not in the photograph. I think the interesting question now is not whether this can replace a real strobe. It obviously cannot. The question is how much of the effect of having had a strobe there can be reconstructed from the information that the camera already captured. That is the experiment I would like to run next.

@Grantmac still not, sorry. I finished the first prototype today, now I'm working on it to make further progress. I still trying to collect a lot of different image material to try on. Will share everything when I make further progress.

Accepted ☺️ This should be one part of the whole diveApp I develop. I think it would be a nice feature for boosting out small details but maybe not we will see. Thanks for your opinion.

For a while I've had an idea in my head: what if you could place the light in an underwater photo afterwards, exactly where you want it, the way you would with a strobe during the dive? I have now started my first attempt at it. It all starts with a depth map: from a single photo, the software calculates how far away every point in the image is from the camera. So it knows what is in front and what lies behind. You click into the photo where the light should go and drag it bigger or smaller. You can set up to five lights, each with its own strength, color and falloff. Just like underwater, the light gets weaker with distance: the subject in front glows, the reef behind it stays calm. What mattered most to me: nothing is invented. No generative AI paints new details or colors into the picture. The light is calculated with image algorithms on the real pixels, guided by the depth mask. What wasn't photographed doesn't end up in the image. The goal is still a natural photo, not a gimmicky effect. Everything runs locally on the Mac, with no cloud and no upload. These are the first results of a test feature: https://depthlight-site-c9a456.gitlab.io/new.html I'd love your honest feedback – what you think about the idea?

Everyone who want to join: can go on the landing page than click Join and upload Photo. https://depthlight-site-c9a456.gitlab.io It would be great if you could upload the phots as zip, include a txt File where you can add some description or any other things you want to tell. If its ok for you that I use your images for post in this threads and/or on the community landing page please write this in the txt file as well. Otherwise the files will not be used in any way. Thanks so much and best regards Jurgen

Thanks for bringing up the AI topic — I’m actually glad you did, because it’s something that matters to me as well. I’m not a fan of generative AI being used to alter photographs either. Just to be completely clear: DepthLight will not use generative AI. In fact, I don’t intend to use AI at all in the app. The automatic mode is based on measurements and traditional algorithms. It analyses the actual image and uses those measurements to calculate a good starting point for the correction. The goal is to make the process faster and easier while keeping the actual photograph intact and giving the photographer full control. There won’t be any AI generating, replacing or inventing image content behind the scenes. The whole app is intended to work this way. And honestly, every image can help. Different cameras, lenses, depths, water conditions and visibility all present different challenges. Every image and every bit of feedback can help me understand those conditions better and improve DepthLight over the long term. So your cold-water images with poor visibility would be particularly interesting, but there’s no need for them to be “perfect” examples — unedited images are absolutely fine. And the fact that you normally don’t remove backscatter is actually useful as well. Thanks again for being willing to contribute. Every image and every opinion counts, and I really appreciate it. @Grantmac

Hi and welcome 🦈

I’m building DepthLight — a photo editor made for underwater photographers. Created by divers, for divers. The idea is to build a tool that understands the real challenges of underwater photography — from lost colors and backscatter to difficult lighting conditions. DepthLight is still in development, and I’d love to shape it together with the diving community. Feedback, ideas and suggestions are very welcome! Have a look and let me know what you think: https://depthlight-site-c9a456.gitlab.io @bvanant @Troporobo on the page is a direct upload possibility to my dropbox.