Underwater photo Photoshop cleanup

Posted on April 13th, 2009 | by Eric |

During my stay in St. Thomas last year I had the opportunity to do a bunch of diving and was able to take some underwater shots. However, due to the way light is absorbed underwater at different depths colors fade to grey in the pictures. For example red disappears at only 15 ft. To compensate for this you can use lights, however, this is probably not an option for the casual underwater photographer. Another, less natural, solution is to simply add some of the color back in using Photoshop. While the pictures are not perfect (and you should do this manually) the action I’ve included at the bottom of this post can make a dramatic improvement on the images and at least allows you to quickly pick out the best shots. Also, I’ve included a link to a backscatter action as well which helps remove some of the noise caused by particles in the water.

Here are a few before/after pics: