Underwater photos (the retouching of them)

Discussion in 'Photography' started by Just_a_woman, Jun 25, 2013.

  1. Just_a_woman

    Just_a_woman Member

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    Greetings!

    I take a lot of underwater pictures. I can't use a filter. So, I get blueish pictures.

    I've used photoshop-like software once to get the colors right. I've followed instructions on the internet to know what to do. But it is a long process. I've got thousands of pictures I'd like to do it to. Is there a way of scripting it, so that one could do it in a batch process, instead of one by one?

    I'm not expecting to get the best results with automation, but at least, better than the original photo.

    I could use something like ImageJ, or the Gimp probably, and script it under a friendly operating system, like linux. But I'm not very familiar with retouching photography. I've only done it once. If somebody like me has to do it, it'll take a long time and lots of experimentation. What I'm hoping for, is that such scrip already exists.

    Do you know of something that could help me? Thank you.
     
  2. NextEvolution

    NextEvolution Member

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    You should be able to tweak your camera's white balance to correct for the blue tinge.
     
  3. MeatyMushroom

    MeatyMushroom Juggle Tings Proppuh

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    I know in LightRoom you can save settings, and apply them for whatever.. not sure if anything else does it, if not there's always time for a cheeky torrent. LightRoom kicks ass anyway, so it's worth a look even if you have got some other software.

    Kinda late reply though, so you may have already fixed it :p
     
  4. buzzgunner

    buzzgunner 180 grains of diplomacy Lifetime Supporter

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    The sad fact is that water soaks up different wavelengths as you go deeper, starting with the longest ones (red and yellow). By the time you hit 15 ft., all your reds will be gone. At 45 ft., you'll have lost all your oranges and yellows. While you can compensate for this a little at shallower depths by adjusting the white balance in your camera, the sad fact is that a strobe (or some other source of color-balanced artificial light) is the only real solution.

    Clearly, this is no help to you since you've already taken all your photos. If the long series of steps you've discovered produce a result that you like, then I strongly urge you to purchase (or otherwise acquire) a recent version of Photoshop (CS4 or later). Assuming that Photoshop can perform all the steps you've identified, and assuming that no individual step in that series requires individual manual tweaking, you can operate Photoshop in "batch" mode and have it perform the same steps, over and over again, on as many photo images as you like.

    Rather than try to detail the process here, I'd encourage you to google "batch image processing with photoshop" (or something similar.) Here's just one example:

    Batch Processing Images in Photoshop

    Good luck!
     

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