Software color balancing

Well, I got my first 200+ UW photos while snorkeling in the Bahamas, and overall, I'm fairly pleased with myself. It was a bit of a chore to stay somewhat still while being on top of the water, so many of the shots were a bit blurry. Most of them are a very green/blue, as I wasn't using my external strobe (not really sure how much it would've helped). I wanted to enjoy myself, and just get a feel for using a camera in the water, and I found myself fumbling around enough just taking snapshots (they are a far cry from the word 'Photographs").

I don't have Photoshop, but I do have the Olympus Master 2 photo editor, and I was playing around with color balance, RBG saturation, etc., and noticed I could get the pics to look better. YAY!

I need some help in getting the basics of color balancing. As the pics are blueish/greenish, do I remove blue and green, and add some red? Is there a standard/basic rule of thumb in doing this, as in how much to remove/add of each? I played around with some pics for an hour, and while they got better, some colors just didn't seem right. As an example, I am having trouble keeping a natural silver on fish after making adjustments. Tips from you pros (and non-pros) are appreciated. Thanks!

Well, I got my first 200+ UW photos while snorkeling in the Bahamas, and overall, I'm fairly pleased with myself. It was a bit of a chore to stay somewhat still while being on top of the water, so many of the shots were a bit blurry. Most of them are a very green/blue, as I wasn't using my external strobe (not really sure how much it would've helped). I wanted to enjoy myself, and just get a feel for using a camera in the water, and I found myself fumbling around enough just taking snapshots (they are a far cry from the word 'Photographs").

 

I don't have Photoshop, but I do have the Olympus Master 2 photo editor, and I was playing around with color balance, RBG saturation, etc., and noticed I could get the pics to look better. YAY!

 

I need some help in getting the basics of color balancing. As the pics are blueish/greenish, do I remove blue and green, and add some red? Is there a standard/basic rule of thumb in doing this, as in how much to remove/add of each? I played around with some pics for an hour, and while they got better, some colors just didn't seem right. As an example, I am having trouble keeping a natural silver on fish after making adjustments. Tips from you pros (and non-pros) are appreciated. Thanks!

Post a few pics, before and after your adjustments so we can see them. The best way to do it is by linking to a gallery in flickr or picassa. You can read how to link in the pinned areas of the image gallery area.

Depending on how deep you were and whether you shot raw or JPEG, you may not be able to improve things all that much. The deeper you go (using available light) the greater out of wack the images become and the greater the difference between the amount of red and yellow light captured compared to blue and green. If you shoot JPEG you are already behind the 8 ball.

Also see this thread: http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=28010

There's a real limit to how much you can do with ambient light, especially if the images were shot on an automatic or programme setting. If you use a "cloudy" setting you can force the camera to record more red, but as you have to reduce the blue channel in post-processing, there is still a problem with the image as the brightness (luminance) falls off rapidly and reduces the amount of red that can be restored. For shallow dives, to about 5m, in tropical water it works. The depth can be extended by using a filter (such as the URPro or Magic filter), but mostly we use strobes.

This was taken at 10m, and it was very difficult to recover much colour:

Have you tried the opposite tack, and converted your images to black-and-white with an increase in contrast?

Tim

Beefer, try Picasa3, with only 3-4 clicks you can reach a huge improvement in image quality:

example:

Wow terriffic image enhancement. Which brings me to my bequinner question. Is color/channel mixing the rule of thumb these days? Does everyone do it? I'm asking becuase I found myself doing it with my 1st shots - couldn't help it.

ZD

http://packerlighting.com/fiji_web

... Is color/channel mixing the rule of thumb these days? Does everyone do it? ...

Don't know for the other people, but because I take UW pictures only with the naked camera (Pentax W cameras), without housing, without flash and other lights, and during free diving (only mask and fins), sometimes to 8 meters deep, I have no other choice.

http://public.fotki.com/primoz/

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Primoz...;view=playlists