# Underwater Images  (removing CYAN)



## sargan (Mar 14, 2014)

I'm new to forum - so excuse if this is not way you like posts here.
I have just purchased LR ... partly as I just upgraded my camera  (Canon G16)

50% + of my pictures are taken while scuba diving ... I do not use any strobes, and having gone that route once do not want to do so again.

For those that may not be familiar water filters out RED light, so much so that 50% of it has gone by the time you are 5m down ....... a lot of my diving is around 15-20m    and there is almost no RED, result is the pictures have a very strong CYAN cast.

Now I have previously used convoluted steps in PS to try and overcome this .... and the 2 main methods are shown in these links:
Recreating with a fill layer:
 http://www.gadling.com/2005/02/11/how-to-editing-underwater-photos/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLt1NB13if8

            or the Channel Mixer approach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFhrTQJg6MI

I have so far only found one Lightoom approach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSpPoLmlgZs

however that was not a particularly bad image to start with (pretty bright)

The typical issue is as shown in this video from the 6min point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvIWxBTNPd8


Does anyone have any presets or workflows that are optimized for Underwater pictures.
I did carry out a search here and found -

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/commu...ages-Settings-or-Profile&highlight=underwater      which has a link out to camera raw ......... but not much help as image its dealing with is really a surface one and has all the RED component


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 14, 2014)

My first thought was to create a custom camera profile using the DNG profile editor, and a quick google turned up other people with the same idea: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photo...alance_adjustments_for_underwater_photography and Eric Chan (Camera Raw Engineer) weighed in on this one too: http://forums.adobe.com/message/6066640?tstart=0


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## sargan (Mar 14, 2014)

not too sure how that would help, as each underwater picture would have different colour profile depending on depth ..  you have dual problem of RED reducing logarithmically with depth .... and light also decreasing with depth.


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 14, 2014)

If you were to create a dual-illuminant profile with a couple of different extremes of red values, then you could use the WB sliders within LR to compensate in between.  Or you could just create a few different camera profiles and pick the one that suits the depth.


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## sargan (Mar 14, 2014)

"dual-illuminant profile"  

sounds great, but I'm a newcomer to LR and have no idea how to do this.


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## Tony Jay (Mar 14, 2014)

sargan said:


> "dual-illuminant profile"
> 
> sounds great, but I'm a newcomer to LR and have no idea how to do this.


This is just a quick introduction to dual illuminant profiles: Using X-Rite’s Color Checker Passport – Target Or Profiles

There is plenty of info from reputable sources on the web.
Here is good resource material from Andrew Rodney (AKA The Digital Dog): Video tutorial on creating DNG camera profiles
Andrew Rodney is a prominent and respected guru on colour management.

The process of creating dual illuminant profiles is not difficult - it just requires a small investment in money and time.

Tony Jay


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 15, 2014)

Great links, thanks Tony.  Sargan, there's also quite a lot of information on the help files that you download with the DNG Profile Editor.  It's worth downloading and having a quick play with it, if nothing else.  I think you'll be surprised how much you can achieve even with really basic settings.


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## Cerianthus (Mar 16, 2014)

Have you considered improving the input by using filters? They filter all light but red and improve the spectrum. Just google for magic filter.


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## Slug (Mar 17, 2014)

sargan said:


> 50% + of my pictures are taken while scuba diving ... I do not use any strobes, and having gone that route once do not want to do so again.



Hi Sargan,

Just out of curiosity, why the negativity with diving strobes?  (with the small footprint of a housed G16, size of the rig shouldn't be an issue?)


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## Jknights (Apr 22, 2014)

There is a Photoshop action that I use for some of my underwater images.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&extid=1042430

This works pretty well for most of my images but they are taken in 5-15m range. 
As you go deeper the red part of the spectrum almost completely disappears so I would recommend using a strobe but this may not suit your style of u/w photos.  There is also the option to convert to B&W but this is again dependent on your style and final output desires.

Some of the experts here maybe able to say how to convert this PS action into a LR preset.  
I wish I could find an easy mechanism for converting actions to presets as I have so many actions I would love to bel able to also use in LR.


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## sargan (Apr 22, 2014)

Slug said:


> Hi Sargan,
> 
> Just out of curiosity, why the negativity with diving strobes?  (with the small footprint of a housed G16, size of the rig shouldn't be an issue?)



I had first one strobe, then a more powerful, then 2... an Ikelite housing which was huge ( guess they have standard box sizes on the shelf)
Add WA lens, focus light and his became a big rig.
It took over the dive, it became all about pictures ... realised this when I did one dive without camera that I was simply not enjoying the dives.  (neither was my buddy)  ... plus not much fun in high current.

Swapped back to compact, and forget camera unless I see something specific I want to remember.
I know others have different opinions, but having been the strobe route ... don't want to go back.
plus with flight weight limits, less kit is easier.   

I may 'review' this with the ever smaller size & increased power of LED lights .... when I could cover stills & video with same light, but probably not there yet ... although getting there:   http://www.uwphototutorials.com/FreeTutorials/HTML/LEDlight2012/LEDlight2012.html


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## sargan (Apr 22, 2014)

Jknights said:


> There is a Photoshop action .....for converting actions to presets as I have so many actions I would love to bel able to also use in LR.



I have several PS  actions, and even a few plugin's. ....best were Red chn  enhancers using  channel mixer & LAB mode.
However I no longer have PS, and only use LR.

Most ATN actions can't be turned into a template as they use layers, and use multiply & blend modes to create artificial Red pixels, LR does not support Layers.

I have been talking to Anthony Morganti (does the acclaimed LR tutorial videos) he is going to have a look at what he can come up with.

If it's any use for PS ... here are 2 post I made some time ago ... collates a couple of the PS solutions to removal of CYAN cast:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/underwater-photography/447525-removing-cyan-cast.html
 some examples are also here:

This post ... I collated tools & workflows for download:
http://forum.divernet.com/showthread.php?t=8175


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