Underwater Photography

[Maffe811]

Hey all! I've been using a Gimp for a couple of years now and thought I'd post what I'm doing with it recently. If anyone is curious I could explain how I corrected them.

I used a crummy film disposable camera which had a red filter built into it.

Before

Spoiler: show

After

Spoiler: show

Before

Spoiler: show

After

Spoiler: show

Before

Spoiler: show

After

Spoiler: show

Before

Spoiler: show

After

Spoiler: show

Before

Spoiler: show

After

Spoiler: show

Before

Spoiler: show

After

Spoiler: show

SAM

[David Wood]

Not bad, a little strong for my taste but nice color correction. Now you should clean up the noise using GreyC or G'Mic

[sagteck]

What do ya mean by strong? jc.

[David Wood]

The colors are strong and oversaturated, especially in the first image. It should be less saturated and have a more aqua green color.

[k.anderson3454]

The pictures are amazing. You capture pictures well.

[sagteck]

Thanks guys. And thanks Maffe811 for putting them in spoiler tags. I didn't think gimper had them.

@David: Yea I tried making them as close to surface colors as I could but due to the low quality camera and the unintended effect the flash had on the red filter I couldn't. I didn't even know it had a red filter until developing the pics.

Here's a couple more pictures of fish in coral.

Spoiler: show

I've got a new 10 megapixel camera now with an underwater housing (up to 200 ft depth!). So in the future you'll be seeing much higher quality pictures. Here's a picture taken with the new camera (image has been highly reduced in resolution by facebook).

Spoiler: show

Anybody know any good noise reduction tutorials? I've already got the G'MIC plugin but I've only used it for anisotropic smoothing (under enhancement) for cartoon images and such (anime). I couldn't figure out how to reduce the noise.

[virtualTune]

The colors are strong and oversaturated, especially in the first image. It should be less saturated and have a more aqua green color.

especially on #4 and the last one imo

[David Wood]

Anybody know any good noise reduction tutorials? I've already got the G'MIC plugin but I've only used it for anisotropic smoothing (under enhancement) for cartoon images and such (anime). I couldn't figure out how to reduce the noise.

You use the same filter. After you're done with the color correction make a 'new from visible' layer on top of the other layers and run the filter, increase the Anisotropy to the max, and if necessary change the noise size until as much noise as possible is gone from the preview, Hit OK and when the filter is done processing lower the layer's opacity to something between 70 and 90, the filter is so powerful the results will look a little fake if you don't change the opacity. Now merge all the layers together and you should have a much cleaner image. And always save as png to avoid jpg compression artifacts.

[sagteck]

Anisotropic smoothing

Spoiler: show

Before

After

Anisotropic smoothing + Hue/Saturation adjustment

Spoiler: show

Before


After, multiplied orange color, subtracted yellow color


After, multiplied orange color, multiplied yellow color

For the second one I had to go into quickmask, create a gradient selection using a square shape, and deleted the outer edges of the anisotropic smoothing layer. That's because the edges of the image got really funky in the smoothing process.

Please tell me your thoughts, would you add/subtract any colors from this? Remember that my camera was already using a red filter and I had to subtract red to get the second one to it's current state (due to reflection of particles in the water from camera flash).

Any further comments/critiques are greatly appreciated because this is my first time working with Photography (and esp underwater photog).

[David Wood]

That does look better, but there is still a lot of noise, you may have to run the filter several times.

[Maffe811]

And thanks Maffe811 for putting them in spoiler tags. I didn't think gimper had them.

No problemo!
Thats what im here for!

[sagteck]

I created a tutorial on gimp-tutorials.net... http://gimp-tutorials.net/node/1620

But when I log out I can't read it. Is there a mod approval system in effect?

[David Wood]

Yes I believe so.

[sagteck]

Is it still maintained? The last user submitted tut is 09/12/2009.

edit: scratch that, 05/03/2010 is latest. So probably is.

[Scrapie]

Ah Didnt know we can log in there xD Ehm, david? do you have the rights to publish tutorials?