5 Basic Edits to Transform Your Underwater Photography

Underwater photography is becoming more and more accessible, as emerging technologies enable great cameras at better prices. Nowadays, you can even take incredible photos on your iPhone when combined with the right watertight case! For some, however, the apparent dullness in their underwater photographs can make them feel they need to spend more money on better gear, or even give up on underwater photography entirely.

I’m here to tell you that with just a few basic edits, you can totally transform your underwater photos from dull and lifeless, into beautiful photos you’d be happy to print or even sell!

I won’t go too much into the different types of editing software, as that’s a whole article in itself, but all of these edits can be performed from free software right up to pro-level.

1. Shoot RAW

This is the only “edit” I’ll describe that actually takes place before you shoot. Most cameras will churn out photos in JPEG format, or similar. This essentially means that your camera has applied basic edits and tweaks and churned out an image that you could send to the printer right away. You can edit these photos, but you don’t have the range of creative control that you could have, because a lot of your image’s information has been lost during compression into JPEG format. So, what can we do about it?

In a nutshell: Shooting in RAW format preserves all of the image information that your camera captures. You have much more scope to edit and transform photos than in a compressed format.

These days, most cameras will allow you to shoot in RAW - even phone cameras. Instead of compressing your image to a ready-to-go format, RAW stores the image as information that can be tweaked and modified to a much higher degree. When imported into editing software, RAW photos look pretty awful and lifeless, but you can make them pop much more than a JPEG counterpart with a few basic edits.

Be aware that RAW files can be 2-3 times larger, so it may be time to upgrade your SD card!

2. Adjust the Lighting

Even a novice photographer will tell you that lighting is everything. It can be tricky to capture enough light underwater as things get pretty dark pretty quickly after the first few feet, and lighting rigs can be more expensive than the camera itself! Fortunately, there are a few tricks you can do in post-processing that can dramatically improve the lighting of your image.

Highlights - the lighter parts of your image - might be too bright and blown out, especially if you’re pointing up towards the surface. Bring the highlights down until you start to see more detail in the lighter parts of your image.

Shadows are essentially the opposite of your highlights. Any dark parts of the image can be lightened by dragging the ‘Shadows’ slider up and bringing out detail in the under-exposed parts.

Exposure is one to use tentatively, but the exposure tool can lighten (or darken) the whole image at once. I generally use this once I’ve done my highlights and shadows to improve the overall look of the image. Be aware that lightening dark images can introduce more noise - we’ll cover that a little later.

Contrast is the difference in brightness between light and dark areas. Increase the contrast to make your subject pop a little more against its background. Here, less is definitely more so don’t overuse it or your image will start to look unnatural!

3. Color Correction

You’ll notice that most of your underwater images look ‘blued out’. The blue-y hue is due to a lack of light: reds and oranges are the first colors to be filtered out because they don’t penetrate the water as deeply as blues and greens (for a more sophisticated explanation, read up on the electromagnetic spectrum. Science!).

To fix this, adjust the temperature and tint of your image to introduce some of those warmer colors back in. On some cameras, you can even set the White Balance to an ‘underwater’ mode before you shoot; which compensates for the lack of light and will make your photos look more naturally colored.

If your images still look a little dull, try adjusting the saturation and vibrance. This will make your colors more vivid, but again should be used sparingly. Some software will let you adjust the saturation of each color separately, this is a nice way to make one coral or fish, in particular, stand out.

4. Clarity, Sharpness, and Noise

Clarity and Sharpness can be used to improve the definition of your image. They both work by improving the contrast between various elements in the lights, darks, and midtones of your image. Again, you don’t want to go too far with these as they can make images look too defined and unnatural.

If you zoom in 100% on your image, you’ll notice it starts to look grainy. We call this noise, and it is especially prevalent in low-light conditions such as conditions underwater. Your editing software will likely have a denoise feature, and you can use this sparingly to reduce the grainy effect. Don’t go too far, otherwise, your image will start to look blurry. Most amateur photographs contain noise, so don’t worry too much about it if you’re not going to be printing in huge sizes!

Tweak your noise, clarity, and sharpness sliders in tandem for the best results.

5. Selective Edits

Now we’re getting into it! Selective edits are generally not available on more basic editing apps, but they are a very useful feature for those wanting to up their photography game. Using gradient or radial filters, you can select a certain part of your image and apply edits locally to that section. They are a great tool for making your subject stand out, blurring the background to create a nice bokeh, or removing busy details that distract your attention.

For underwater close-ups, I generally use radial filters on my subject, focussing on the sharpness, clarity, and colors to make it pop. For wide reef shots, I’ll use a gradient filter (or vignette) to darken certain outer edges and draw the eye to a focal point, and apply certain edits to the reef/ open water independently: editing one without affecting the other.

A final word...

With these basic steps, you’ll be taking photographs that you can be proud of in no time. Almost all of these edits can be achieved on the latest iPhones, so grab yourself a ProShot Case and get snapping!