How to put the red back, but still keeping the blue of the water?

Hi,

I have this problem all the time. On post processing I use the popular Photoshop action to put the reds back in the image. The problem is that it pretty much eliminates all the blue.

When I see the coolest photos in the magazines, they manage to keep some of the blue of the background while optimizing the subjects.

- Is there a better solution than just running the red-correction photoshop action?

- What would be a better process to keep some of the blue?

See the before and after pictures attached and let me know if it could have been done better.

Thanks so much!

Your image is a genuine reproduction of how it really looks. To get more reds, you need to add your own local white light source (strobe) illuminating the foreground subject. The background blue will not be affected - the local light cannot reach that far.

Without a strobe, try a Magic Filter and keep the sun to your back.

Photoshop will allow you to mask and adjust the white balance of selected areas, even adding information to the red channel from others but it is not a quick process. Best left for unrepeatable shots that have gone awry rather than as routine.

Hi,

I have this problem all the time. On post processing I use the popular Photoshop action to put the reds back in the image. The problem is that it pretty much eliminates all the blue.

When I see the coolest photos in the magazines, they manage to keep some of the blue of the background while optimizing the subjects.

 

- Is there a better solution than just running the red-correction photoshop action?

- What would be a better process to keep some of the blue?

 

 

See the before and after pictures attached and let me know if it could have been done better.

 

Thanks so much!

Hope you don't mind, I was having a coffee and started playing with your image. I'm sure given more time you could get a lot better.

Cheers

Andy.

As Balrog says, the best course of action is to use a strobe on future dives.

However, that does not help your current image. I'm no pro at Photoshop, others may be able to offer specific advice, but you can create a composite image with your original (with blue water) and the edited version. The basic principle is that you over lay the original on top of the edited version then use the eraser tool on 100% opacity to erase out your main subject, exposing the edited version underneath. This might a look a bit un-natural at first but you can dial down the opacity to leave a little bit of blue color cast so the final image blends together.

Hope that helps, like I said, others may be able to provide a more detailed (accurate) description but maybe this can get you started.

Hi,

I have this problem all the time. On post processing I use the popular Photoshop action to put the reds back in the image. The problem is that it pretty much eliminates all the blue.

When I see the coolest photos in the magazines, they manage to keep some of the blue of the background while optimizing the subjects.

 

- Is there a better solution than just running the red-correction photoshop action?

- What would be a better process to keep some of the blue?

 

 

See the before and after pictures attached and let me know if it could have been done better.

 

Thanks so much!

As mentioned, strobes will help alot. Will put together something for you to look at with some more details, but you can get it looking like this pretty quickly. If the original was a RAW file, the results would be better.

Will give you the steps in a bit. My Photoshop got glitchy

Here you go. More of the concepts as opposed to the exact steps each time, they will change. The first thing you will see is that the Red Channel is bought back a bit by Apply Image technique, then various sliders to adjust and tweak things. There are many ways to approach it and you will see some of them. The final image in the movie looks like this:

The video is real time, no sound. Including my fumble fingers/under or over coffee infused mind, takes under 3 and a half minutes to do this.

This is the YouTube post

If the YouTube is too small or not loading, click this to see the video.

Also I will pull the image and video if you like, not trying to steal it Figured it was good though to show your photo. HTH.

It looks good. Thanks for the video.

Helps a lot.

It looks good. Thanks for the video.

Helps a lot.

Glad to help. Do a few shots and you will really get the feel of the controls and what may work where.

Glad to help. Do a few shots and you will really get the feel of the controls and what may work where.

I am still struggling to bring the blue back. After I do some corection for the reds, the blue tends to turn kind of purple.

I try to use Selective Color but makes very little difference. When I use Levels, the problem is that it affects the whole image and ends up undoing the improvements I had done to that point.

Another thing that happens is that when people look at a gallery with my pics, they see several blues in the different pictures, some more cyanish, others more redish. It's weird.

Here are some of the shots I have played with so far. Not sure how to further improve them.

I am still struggling to bring the blue back. After I do some corection for the reds, the blue tends to turn kind of purple.

I try to use Selective Color but makes very little difference. When I use Levels, the problem is that it affects the whole image and ends up undoing the improvements I had done to that point.

 

Another thing that happens is that when people look at a gallery with my pics, they see several blues in the different pictures, some more cyanish, others more redish. It's weird.

 

Here are some of the shots I have played with so far. Not sure how to further improve them.

It takes a bit of practice and some photos may not work as well with one technique as others. One thing to try is use real extreme settings in the levels and other tools. Not for the final, but to get a sense of what portion of the photo is being changed. Sometimes seeing extreme changes helps bring it to where you can see what you are tweaking more easily. Sometimes you need other sliders in addition to Levels and Selective Color. Another thing to look at is using Duplicate layers and even some of the auto functions. Duplicating a layer an using auto functions then fading the layer a bit can also work out well. On the turtle picture I used a bit of that. Adjusted the levels using the Levels (not auto levels) and some tweaks to get the image to look like this:

The duplicated the layer and applied some auto functions for the most part to get this

And then another layer and playing with the opacity:

Note that I also cropped the shot a bit. Depending on the colors in the water, you may get some banding in the water and also monitors can/will shift colors. There is going to be a bit of blur on the last image in the series, was playing with lens correction and only applied it to one layer.