• Getting the Most Out of Your Reef Tank Photos: Photoshop Processing



    Shortly after I began taking interest in reef tank photography and posting information on the various forums, I began receiving emails and private messages from people who wanted help improving their pictures. Some people blamed their cameras, others their lack of experience... but when I spent some time looking at their photos, I found that quite a few of them were really good. One of the most common problems, though, was poor post-processing. Photos that could have been spectacular were just OK, photos that could have been salvaged were almost beyond recognition.


    Everybody knows that you can do just about anything imaginable with your images in Photoshop. Many people have an aversion to doing anything beyond cropping and re-sizing, thinking that they're corrupting their photos if they adjust the color or exposure. The fact is, though, that if you're not getting a final photograph that accurately reflects what you see with your own eyes, it's more honest to make the proper changes in post-processing to make it match your expectations.

    In this regard, Photoshop (or any other photo editor that you use) should be considered an integral part of the photographic process, much like the photographic lab was 15 years ago. When I shot film, I knew which films would give me the best greens and blues and which would give me the most vibrant reds and yellows. I knew how to process my black and white film to get the most shadow detail, and how to dodge and burn in the darkroom to get the most tonal range in my final print. As a journalist, I had to use these techniques in order to produce a photo for publishing that accurately depicted what I saw, knowing that my Tri-X film was going to over-react to blues and wash out the sky, for example.

    Similarly, you can't expect your camera to simply produce an accurate representation of the world. Even if you set the white balance correctly and expose your photo correctly, your sensor simply isn't going to react the same way that your eye and your brain do. Your camera is going to need your help to get it right... and knowing how to do that is the difference between owning a camera and being a photographer.

    Of course, most of what can be done is beyond the scope of what I can get into a few videos. It is also true that most of us are not journalists, and we're perfectly free to enhance our photos as artwork rather than documentary. So take the following videos for what they are; simply a peek through the keyhole at what is possible.

    All of the following videos are screen captures that are in wide-screen high definition (720p). To get the most out of them, make sure that your youtube frame is set to 720 and that you full-screen (or otherwise enlarge) the video to show all of the necessary detail. If you find that you have a photo that you like, but think could use some work, feel free to email it to me, and I'd be more than happy to produce another video showing you what I might do with it.

    Tonal Correction

    These videos go through the process of using curves to correct the tonal range and color of reef tank photos, among other things. The first pair of videos (really one video cut in half to fit youtube's guidelines) is a relatively slow walk-though of a single photo being processed. The video is about 18 minutes long. If you're already familiar with Photoshop, you might consider skipping ahead to the second video.

    [All of the following videos were uploaded to YouTube in 720p HD, and they'll be pretty hard to see if you don't watch them at full size. You can also download the videos for later viewing from my blog, where they were originally posted.]




    The second video goes through the same general process, but faster.



    White Balance Correction

    This video was made as a reply to a specific topic at another forum, and specifically covers how to correct white balance in a photo using Camera Raw or adjustment layers. Keep in mind, however, that using a "correct", neutral color balance may not always be the most honest way to process your photos.



    As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Also keep in mind that there are dozens of ways to achieve the same results in Photoshop, and some work better that others, depending on the situation. If you don't own a copy of Photoshop, please don't try to pirate a copy; you're likely to get unstable results or viruses. Instead, try the photo editing software that came with your camera, or GIMP! http://www.gimp.org/



    Matthew Gore is a wedding and commercial photographer working in the greater Seattle area. He also has nearly 15 years of experience with Photoshop, and writes a photography blog called "Light and Matter" which houses a variety of informational articles and video tutorials that are not reef-tank related.
    Comments 10 Comments
    1. Gomojoe's Avatar
      Gomojoe -
      Nice tutorials! It's amazing how powerful photoshop is when you know how to use all the tools!
    1. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
      Alaska_Phil -
      Thanks Reefmatt! I just watched the first one and tried it out on ifanview, it lets you look at the histogram, but not edit there, so I used the brightness and contrast options till I got it where I wanted. I'll be downloading Gimp soon.

      First the original image.


      And edited
    1. Jessy's Avatar
      Jessy -
      Quote Originally Posted by Alaska_Phil View Post
      Thanks Marc! I just watched the first one and tried it out on ifanview, it lets you look at the histogram, but not edit there, so I used the brightness and contrast options till I got it where I wanted. I'll be downloading Gimp soon.
      The second image looks much improved. Just wanted to mention that Marc didn't write this article. It was written by ReefMatt... Marc doesn't write EVERYTHING for this site
    1. Alaska_Phil's Avatar
      Alaska_Phil -
      Oops! corrected my post, Sorry about that Matt.
    1. GoinAcropoora's Avatar
      GoinAcropoora -
      This has gotta be the most helpful photoshop/digital photo processing tutorials I've ever seen. I'm a blockhead with computers and these videos really help. I swear, I didn't even know what that histogram was all about before this. THANK YOU ReefMatt. Please keep the tutorials coming.
    1. ReefMatt's Avatar
      ReefMatt -
      I'm glad to hear that some of you are finding this useful I've thought about making similar videos for GIMP. Does anyone here think that would be useful? Having just had to deal with the price-tag of the new Photoshop CS5, I can see why most people wouldn't want to put up the money.

      - Matt
    1. melev's Avatar
      melev -
      Matt, I always enjoy learning new tricks in Photoshop. GIMP is a free program that others might opt to use, so I'd encourage you to keep up the good work with your tutorials.

      I've never used curves ever, so it was informative. I also liked your feathering command as you darkened the borders some. Thanks!
    1. rEd86's Avatar
      rEd86 -
      Great tutorial. Just to confirm, you mention that you loaded RAW format photos - do these techniques only work when you shoot RAW, or do you have more data and therefore get better results with RAW?

      I've only overheard the debate of shooting in RAW and discounted it because of the storage requirements. With 32Gb cards are around, I might have to rethink that position given the results of your demo.

      --Ed
    1. ReefMatt's Avatar
      ReefMatt -
      Ed,

      Without getting into all of the details at the moment, RAW files contain a lot more data than jpgs (and more importantly, that data hasn't be confined to a certain color temperature, contrast, color saturation, etc) so they will always give you better results than jpgs or 8bit tiffs, especially when you make the changes in Adobe Camera Raw instead of inside Photoshop. There is a HUGE benefit to shooting RAW, and the files are not outlandishly large... for a 10megapixel camera, a jpg should be around 3 megs (highest quality) and a RAW around 7-8 megs... and considering the cost of SD cards or Compact Flash cards these days, it's hardly worth worrying about. I've shot entire weddings on only two 8G cards.

      However, the way that I demonstrated things in the tutorials applies equally to any type of image. You'll get better results with RAW or other 16-bit space images, but you can also get great results with jpgs [In the most recent versions of photoshop, you can actually open jpgs in Camera Raw, but they still don't have the same flexibility as actual RAW files.]

      - Matt
    1. Ownzordage's Avatar
      Ownzordage -
      Very nice tutorials! I only had time to watch the first 2 but you managed to show me some new things in Photoshop that I hadn't known about. I'll use your techniques for some pictures that I'm hoping to use for desktop backgrounds. Hopefully they work