I'm very new at the digital underwater stuff, so please bear that in mind I've just been away for a weeks diving and managed to get a lot of shots, some of them good, some of them a little less so. I understand why the further ambient light shots turned out like this http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/Naz...urseclosesm.jpg but was wondering if some kind person would be able to point me towards a good starting point for info about playing with photoshop to hopefully help them look better. At this point I have photoshop 7, but I guess if I have to I'll have to look into getting PS CS.
TIA:)
It would be a lot easier if you had a strobe. It's hard to fix something when the subject blends so much with surrounding water. Looks like it would have been a tremendous image if you had more light. That makes my heart pound just looking at it.
Tony
It would be a lot easier if you had a strobe.
Yep, definately. Unfortunately at this point money prevents that :? At the time I was trying to use the integral flash and was getting a heap of backscatter so decided to only use it on close up subjects. I'm not sure if that was a wise decision or not...
Nazaar:
Use Picture Adjustments Levels (I wouldn't use Autolevel) or even Better Layers -> Add Adjustments Layer -> Levels
To correct Levels: This is a question of practice but this is what I found to be a good starting point:
Correct Leves not in the Main Part but for the three coulour chanelles seperatly
Move for each channel the left and the right arrorw directly under the histogram to where the histogram "begins" on this side. After you did this for all colour channels you can go back and fine tune. here you can also use the middle arrow.
Using the layer is better, because you can go bacj and change easaly. I normaly save a version befor Flattening the Layers again for further processing.
Simon
If you want to learn more about Photoshop, you may want to take the on-line course at www.theunderwaterphotographer.com. It is an entire course on using PS for underwater images. Check out the website and make your own decision. It's about $50. I have no affiliation with them bu the way.
Joe
Thanks for the pointers guys, I'm getting somewhere, slowly. The layers/levels thing seems to be working pretty well.
If there's no red channel left due to depth, is it the case that there's not a lot you can do beyond monochrome?
Will look into the online course, it sounds interesting...
There are a bunch of good tutorials around for free.
I've just been away for a weeks diving and managed to get a lot of shots, some of them good, some of them a little less so. I understand why the further ambient light shots turned out like this http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/Naz...urseclosesm.jpg but was wondering if some kind person would be able to point me towards a good starting point for info about playing with photoshop to hopefully help them look better. At this point I have photoshop 7, but I guess if I have to I'll have to look into getting PS CS. 
