Serious help with the "blues"

I have calibrated my monitor, etc...but all my pics look like this when printed. Any ideas? This pic was so bad I had to turn it into B&W. The blues are horribly unnatural. Is there a "recipe" or color numbers as a guide when using PS that I could use when dealing with the blues?

yeh, you would think the ship might have been sunk by a nuke and the water was still "hot".

Oceans are all sorts of colours, but one thing they aren't is magenta-blue.

To start with, are you workiing in RAW, or jpeg out of the camera?

That is an accurate description!

I believe that was jpeg, but I now do my best to work in RAW. I am not real good at it. I just play around with the sliders and watch the histogram.

is it just when printed or do they look like that out of the camera and on the screen?

is it just when printed or do they look like that out of the camera and on the screen?

On my screen, it looks terrible, so the answer is both...when I try to correct it, and it gets printed, its even worse.

Mostly, the blues in a lot of my pics look more purple. I was wondering if there was a color number I could get to in PS so that I would know the blue would look natural when printed, even though it might not look quite right on my monitor.

Honestly, it could be a setting somewhere on my PS or monitor but I am confused about the color management thing....the more I read the more confused I get!

Are you using Mac or PC?

Is it just underwater shots that have any colour cast?

What are the white balance options on your camera and what were they set on for the underwater pictures?

Are you using Mac or PC?

Is it just underwater shots that have any colour cast?

What are the white balance options on your camera and what were they set on for the underwater pictures?

The white balance was set to "auto". Just the underwater pics are affected....some are kind of purply color.

You may want to start by trying the 'cloudy' setting for WB.

To fix the shots you already have, there probably is no substitute though for taking the time to learn Photoshop techniques to fix these problems. It's a little daunting at first, but just practice on copies of your files. A place to start will be this thread

http://www.wetpixel.com/i.php/full/getting...derwater-blues/

That is a great tutorial! A lot of work to save a pic but worth it. I have never used curves, but would love to learn. If anyone can suggest a good book on learning curves, I would appreciate it!

okiediver,

I certainly feel your frustration. It's fairly easy to improve in photoshop, but your camera settings need changing too:

(photo by okiediver)

Normally I edit all my jpegs (i know, i know, RAW blah blah - i'm lazy) using Levels in photoshop. This photo however screamed Hues/Saturation. Here's what I did in the Hues/Saturation command:

Master Tab

Saturation -35

Blues Tab

Hue -5

Lightness -35

It doesn't make it perfect, but much better. First, the image is too saturated. If you have a saturation setting in your camera, turn it down. I used to shoot my D200 in high saturation but others clued me in that the colours were too wild. Next, figure out a white balance to use, auto functions never work underwater. I set my D200 to 5900K and it works great (you prob. don't have colour temp WB...). Last is exposure. The image is over exposed. I know that if you turned it down, you would lose detail on the wreck, but that is the bane of ambient light shooting into the sun. For a full wreck shot, try shooting with the sun or get close with strobes and using a negative exposure compensation.

I'm still fairly new to UW shooting, perhaps some of the experts can give you better advice, but those are my thoughts. Cheers,

Undertow

This is an excellent book to get started

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-Unde...l/dp/1584281898

Another excellent place to start is with Tom and Theresa Stack's course in Key Largo which is advertised on this site top bar from time to time.

There are other excellent books like the Photoshop Channels Book, but I recommend you start simple.

I wrote an article in UWP Magazine called "Getting the blues" that might be of use. I can't remember what issue it was in - and it is hard to check because I am in Egypt.

Alex

What printer are you using?

I recently attended the "Photoshop World" convention in Las Vegas because I have experienced the exact problem you are having with the blues. What I found out after attending 3 days of mind bending conferences and workshops is that monitor calibration is just the (necessary) beginning.

Every paper you use has it's own ICC profile which you can download from the manufacturer. The profile tells the printer how much ink to lay down to get the proper color photoshop is sending to it. Epson's Glossy profile will be different than HP's or Kodak's, etc. You need to use the "Print with preview" option in photoshop and pick the proper ICC profile to the paper you are using.

Also, since I had been responsible for much deforestation with not much to show for it, I found that you need to color calibrate the printer as well as the monitor, which if done correctly is a real pain, as it also has to be done for each type of paper you are using. I found that once I had done this, my printed images actually looked like what was on my screen.

Finally, I picked up a book by Dan Margulis called "Photoshop LAB color" which I found helpful in many circumstances. It's about as much fun as reading Gray's Anatomy though.

On my screen, it looks terrible, so the answer is both...when I try to correct it, and it gets printed, its even worse

What colour space are using? If you're trying to print using sRGB colour space the colours will not print correctly. Make sure you use the Adobe RGB colour space when printing.