Mastering Lightroom for Underwater Photography: A Workflow Guide

When I first started in underwater photography, I looked at other people’s images a lot. They seemed more “polished” than mine; that was the best way I could describe it. At the time, I wasn’t really editing photos. I would say I was one of those shooters who always said you should be able to do everything in-camera, and that I wanted to learn to take photos, not learn how to create them on a computer.

I learned over time that you can’t be a serious photographer without editing your photos. It’s not cheating; it is a fundamental step in completing your images. Time and time again, I see images on Instagram that could be enhanced with a good edit. Consider Lightroom to be the finishing school for your images where you polish and refine them. When I teach workshops, I tend to tell people that it’s 85% underwater and 15% of the work needs to be done in Lightroom. RAW files that come from modern cameras actually come out of the camera as very flat images. All they are doing is trying to capture as much data as possible, ready to be finished. When a camera displays a JPEG file on the back of your camera, this file has already had internal editing done by the camera’s software. The RAW files you load have not had this done, and therefore, you need to do it.

It is imperative that you shoot all of your images as RAW files. These images contain the most data and therefore give you the most “dynamic range,” allowing you to push the files further in the editing process.

Underwater photography presents unique challenges and opportunities, with distinct lighting conditions, colors, and clarity issues that are different from land-based photography. Adobe Lightroom offers a robust set of tools to help photographers enhance and perfect their underwater images. This guide will help you realize which of the tools are more useful for us as underwater shooters.

Now, I have no interest in taking a bad image and trying to make it into an okay photo by removing lots of issues and trying to rectify problems I created with poor technique. But in this article, we will talk through my basic workflow; the things I look at with every image. We could go into endless amounts of detail, but this is a good step-by-step process of the basic things I look at in each image.

1. Importing and Organizing Photos

Importing and organizing photos are done from the Library module of Lightroom.

Import Photos:

• Start by importing your underwater images into Lightroom. When you connect your camera’s memory card to your computer, an auto pop-up comes up in Lightroom offering you various import methods: Add, Copy, or Move. I use the “Copy” option and then choose to copy the files from the memory card to my desired location. You can choose that location on the right-hand side. I also choose to add some keywords to the files; this makes it easier to search for images at a later date (e.g., “underwater,” “coral,” “fish”).

Keeping and Rejecting Images:

• Quickly go through the images and use the shortcut keys P and X for Pick and Reject. This will separate my keeper images from the ones I want to reject. I then delete all the rejected photos to make it into a more manageable amount (Photo from the Menu then Delete Rejected Photos…).

• Finally, I run through the images and look for my favorite ones that I wish to prioritize for editing. When I find the ones I like, I use the shortcut 5, which gives those images 5 stars. I then have it set so all the 5-star images go to the top of the album, making them easy to find.

2. Basic Adjustments – Global

Adjustments to your image are made from the Develop module of Lightroom.

White Balance:

• Underwater images often have a blue or green cast. Use the “White Balance” tool to correct this. Select the eyedropper tool and click on a neutral color in your photo, or adjust the temperature and tint sliders manually until the colors look natural. This is an imperative step, and I often see photos with a bad white balance with a yellow cast. White balancing is especially important in ambient light photos.

Exposure:

• Adjust the “Exposure” slider to correct the overall brightness of your image. Underwater photos can be darker due to reduced light penetration, so increasing exposure may be necessary. You are looking to have an overall pleasing brightness to your images. Hint: Make sure your brightness is all the way up on your computer before you start playing with this setting so that you get an accurate adjustment.

Contrast:

• Many people use contrast to add pop to images. I actually very rarely use it as I believe that the other sliders allow you to make a custom contrast to your images. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with using it. Try the slider for yourself and see what you think.

  

  A reef scene in Egypt, showing pre and post edit

3. Tone Adjustments

Highlights and Shadows:

• Use the “Highlights” slider to recover details in the bright areas of your image. Adjust the “Shadows” slider to bring out details in the darker parts. Usually, in underwater images, we need to decrease highlights and increase the shadows. When raising the shadows, be careful of introducing noise into the image, even when shooting at lower ISO modes. Be especially careful when shooting at higher ISO values of 400 or more.

Whites and Blacks:

• Adjust the “Whites” and “Blacks” sliders to set the white and black points of your image. This can help to achieve a balanced exposure and enhance overall contrast. When using these sliders, hold the Alt or Option key down; the screen will go black. Then, as you increase or decrease the sliders, you will see parts of the image begin to appear. As soon as you do, you have gone far enough with the sliders.

4. Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation

Clarity, Texture, and Dehaze:

• Increase the “Clarity” slider to enhance midtone contrast and give your underwater photos a sharper, more detailed look. Shooting underwater means we are shooting through water; therefore, the images often need some clarity added. This slider works very well on underwater images, but be careful not to take it too far.

• Texture: This is the slider I avoid out of the three. It gives an odd look to the images and also introduces grain and noise.

• Dehaze: I like this on some images. Things like reef scenes with blue water backgrounds work well. But images with quite an even exposure throughout the frame, I don’t like it so much. I find it works very well on slow shutter blur images where the technique has added in a lot of haze, and we need to define the image more and separate the artificially lit and ambient light parts.

Vibrance and Saturation:

• Use the “Vibrance” slider to boost the intensity of colors without oversaturating skin tones or natural colors. The “Saturation” slider can be used to adjust the overall color intensity, but use it sparingly to avoid unnatural results. You often need to increase these after adding clarity to the image as it desaturates images.

5. Color Adjustments

HSL/Color Panel:

• Use the “HSL/Color” panel to fine-tune individual colors. Adjust the “Hue,” “Saturation,” and “Luminance” sliders for specific color channels (e.g., blue, green) to correct color casts and enhance specific elements in your underwater images.

• We often have a green color cast in our images that is especially seen on things like sand. To remove this, the legendary underwater photo editing pro Erin Quigley came up with the phrase “Ban the Cyan by moving aqua towards blue, desaturate aqua.” This will really remove this nasty color cast from your images.

  

  Editing is important on all image types, even extreme shots like this artificial background macro shot

6. Detail Enhancements

Sharpening:

• Go to the “Detail” panel and use the “Sharpening” sliders to enhance the details. Be cautious with sharpening to avoid introducing noise. Use this sparingly.

Noise Reduction:

• Underwater photos often have higher ISO settings, resulting in noise. Use the “Noise Reduction” sliders to reduce luminance and color noise, ensuring a cleaner image.

7. Lens Corrections and Transformations

Lens Corrections:

• Enable “Lens Corrections” to correct distortions, chromatic aberrations, and vignetting. This is particularly useful for wide-angle lenses commonly used in underwater photography.

Transform:

• Use the “Transform” panel to correct any perspective distortions, ensuring your images look natural and well-composed.

8. Spot Removal and Local Adjustments

Spot Removal:

• Use the “Spot Removal” tool to clean up any backscatter or particles in the water. This tool can also be used to remove unwanted objects or imperfections. The tool has three modes: Content-Aware Remove, Heal and Clone. If you have a spot that doesn’t get removed with one mode, try one of the others. When using this tool, pay close attention to where the tool is getting its information to replace the spot. I have seen people using this on backscatter, and the tool automatically adds backscatter back in by pulling from another area on the image that has backscatter. The program may do this as it sees the two parts of the image as similar. Be sure to move the selector to a part of the image that is backscatter-free.

Local Adjustments:

• Use the “Adjustment Brush,” “Radial Filter,” and “Graduated Filter” for localized edits. For instance, you can enhance the brightness and clarity of a specific subject or darken the background to make your subject stand out.

• Lightroom has recently added masks; these are invaluable tools, but we will have to do a whole article just on how to use them.

9. Final Touches and Export

Crop and Straighten:

• Use the “Crop” tool to refine the composition. Ensure the horizon is straight and crop to remove any distracting elements.

Vignette:

• Adding a slight vignette using the “Effects” panel to draw attention to the center of the image can be a good way to finish an image. Once again, use this technique with a subtle touch and ensure you don’t add it to all of your images.

Export:

• Once satisfied with your edits, export your image. Go to “File” > “Export” and choose your desired settings for file format, size, and quality. I like to store all my finished images on Dropbox where I can search for them anytime.

Conclusion

Lightroom is a powerful tool for transforming your underwater photos from raw captures to stunning images. By following this workflow, you can correct color casts, enhance details, and bring out the best in your underwater photography. Practice and experimentation with these tools will help you develop a personal editing style and create captivating underwater images that truly shine.

Remember, this is not cheating. It’s a part of the creative process, and it’s very difficult to produce high-quality finished images without it due to the way data is put together in RAW files.