Took this shot in Curacao

With my new Oly point and shoot. No cropping. Tried some color corrections/enhancements in Aperture (got it for my Mac because the Elements version offered was old and Photoshop was too expensive). I have to learn this software. I really don't know what I'm doing much with Aperture but then again, I wasn't that great in Elements on my PC either. LOL. Is it too bright? Too much saturation? Thanks

great catch!

its a bit tough not knowing the "right" colour ... so here is MHO

I took out the cyan cast which seemed to dominate

& reduced the saturation on the greens

& applied the unsharp mask

there a few artifacts, especially in the wrasse tail, but these wouldn't be as bad working from the original

what do you think better or worse?

what do you think better or worse?

I'm not nakedwithoutcamera, but I'll give my opinion, FWIW. When I saw the image as originally posted, I did not realize that the wrasse was in the process of being eaten. After the corrections, however, I could see what a "catch" it was. In other words, I like the improved version.

In the original version, it looks like there are blown highlights on the portion of the wrasse's body that we can see. Not sure whether it's due solely to the unsharp mask or not, but I now see detail in the wrasse that I did not see before.

To nakedwithout camera:

When we are Indonesia together this fall, please let me know if you see any photo ops like this one. I've never been able to get a photo of a fish being eaten.

Nice job on taking advantage of an amazing photo opportunity that possibly was over almost before it started.

Ellen

PS Maybe you should consider changing your name since you are no longer "naked without camera"

Thanks so much LNDR. Your version is definitely much much better. Thanks so much for the tips. What do you mean by "artifacts?" I'm rather new to all of this and don't understand some terms. Thanks.

Ellen, the DM in Curacao found this. I can't take any credit.

What do you mean by "artifacts?"

Here's an explanation of Artifacts, complete with images to support the text:

JPEG Artifacts

Hope that helps.

PS Maybe you should consider changing your name since you are no longer "naked without camera"

No, will be too confusing

Nakedw/ocamera, nice shot as ornate mentions. Looks like the new camera is working well and with some tweaks as LNDR shows tweaks bring it out more.

No, will be too confusing

 

Nakedw/ocamera, nice shot as ornate mentions. Looks like the new camera is working well and with some tweaks as LNDR shows tweaks bring it out more.

I definitely am not disappointed in it. That shot was taken in the UW Macro Scene mode with only the internal flash. I could not believe how far the UW Scene modes have come in the Oly compared to my 7070. I only used the UW scene mode for my first dive or so when I got 7070 camera, then gradually learned how to use the manual settings. I pretty much stuck to the UW settings for this trip to Curacao with the SP-560 UZ since the camera was brand new and I really didn't know what I was doing.

The tweaking of photos in PS has always been my downfall. I never know quite what to do but LNDR helped me out a lot. I am soo grateful.

I definitely am not disappointed in it. That shot was taken in the UW Macro Scene mode with only the internal flash. I could not believe how far the UW Scene modes have come in the Oly compared to my 7070. I only used the UW scene mode for my first dive or so when I got 7070 camera, then gradually learned how to use the manual settings. I pretty much stuck to the UW settings for this trip to Curacao with the SP-560 UZ since the camera was brand new and I really didn't know what I was doing.

Nice to hear because I remember you shopping. And the first time you get it beneath the waves you are already are enjoying it

The tweaking of photos in PS has always been my downfall. I never know quite what to do but LNDR helped me out a lot. I am soo grateful.

Not easy to get good at it, but with a little practice it comes along. Maybe you should go back and retrace what LNDR did so you can get the hang a bit more of where/how - having a photo that you took and working through the motions of helpful steps is something I like doing also. You also may want to put notes somewhere for which photo you did what to so when you start seeing some of the same general issues in another photo it can act as a quick reference.

Again, glad the new camera is working out

Maybe you should go back and retrace what LNDR did so you can get the hang a bit more of where/how - having a photo that you took and working through the motions of helpful steps is something I like doing also. You also may want to put notes somewhere for which photo you did what to so when you start seeing some of the same general issues in another photo it can act as a quick reference.

 

Again, glad the new camera is working out

Thanks. I definitely was going to do that.

Thanks so much LNDR. Your version is definitely much much better.

cheers - glad you thought so

What do you mean by "artifacts?"

As Ellen pointed out there are artifacts caused by the jpeg compression. Artifacts are patterns, colours, or other things in the photo which were not real, but caused by the processing of the image. In this case I was meaning some of the colours and patterns, for example in the wrasses tail, where there are off colours, bright pixels, and blockiness. Playing with the saturation is an easy way to make this happen

I definitely am not disappointed in it. That shot was taken in the UW Macro Scene mode with only the internal flash.

You shouldn't be disapointed!! You got a shot, and it shows a pretty neat behaviour

It may help to understand your scene modes so you can anticipate the result. This scene mode has probably used a slow shutter speed, that is the shutter is open for a longer time to allow more ambient (sun) light in. This shutter speed doesn't at all affect the amount of light from of the flash because that happens really quickly. This ambient light underwater, as you know, has a lot of the red taken out and so your photos will have the cyan cast. If you didn't use the slow shutter speed you would get richer colours, but the background would be dark / black because there wouldn't be enought ambient light to light up the water column in the background.

HTH

Leander