Wetpixel Live: Photoshop for Underwater Photographers

The use of Adobe Photoshop remains contentious among underwater photographers. Inspired by a recent GoAskErin tutorial, @adamhanlon chats to @Alex_Mustard about how he uses the app and how he uses post capture editing as a part of his creative process.

My workflow is Capture One followed by Photoshop, in theory I could do just about everything in Capture One, but some things feel like you are trying to jump through flaming loops compared to the effort to do the same thing in Photoshop.  I've been using Photoshop for over 20 years now and working in it is second nature and I don't see the need to learn a new workflow to achieve the same thing.  My workflow is somewhat similar to Alex's - RAW files stored in folders (no lightroom catalogue though), then store my processed full size tifs in folders, and a standard sized jpeg is also stored.

One thing that really makes a difference for me is having levels available as a tool - that is where I do do all my colour balancing and the process is so fast, levels is not available in Lightroom - but it is included in Capture One and I could not live without that particular tool.

I must also agree that the process for removing backscatter is so easy in Photoshop compared to either Capture One or Lightroom ( I have seen what is involved in Lightroom even if I have not used it) .  To make it even faster get a graphics tablet and just touch each dust spot with your pen.  I also could not live without actions, one click to produce a jpeg for output to social media complete with copyright details added to the EXIF and a © signature on the image.