Post Processing Challenge, October 1, 2021

There are no rules as to how you apply your post processing to this image; but, please let us know what you have done so we can all learn.

If you would like to post a candidate image next week, please ensure it is of sufficiently high resolution for manipulation by the participants (3000px on the long side, 300dpi for example).

Most of all, let's have fun while we are learning or demonstrating how we use our post-processing software, imaginations and interpretations.

We haven't had an underwater PPC yet, as I recall, so here is one. This is my sister pointing at a Moray eel sticking it's head out of the rocks directly below her finger and just above the patch of sand. Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii.

Attributions below.

Signs uploaded to File:Marinesting1.jpg - Wikimedia Commons by user TydeNet, currently renamed to user Xabian40409. Image used under license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

Tom - good color correction. Water absorbs the red end of the spectrum, leaving blue-green.

Mike - Your sign is apropos, it immediately called to my mind that I was stung on my ankle by a jellyfish in this bay in 2018!

Just levels and adding the blue color.

Thanx for posting, Glenn.

Boop!

I took the shot of the sharks at the Ripley's Aquarium at the base of the CN Tower in Toronto. A bunch of masking in PS and then I doubled the part with the diver, used multiply blend mode and backed off the opacity.

Nice challenge, Glenn! Here’s my thinking: you’re not all that deep since the red on the diver’s wrist is still very red, but it looks like she’s about 5’ above the bottom, so the bottom is going to be significantly red- and orange-challenged.

I white-balanced on the gloves to figure out how to restore the near-surface flesh tones on her face, then I white-balanced on the sand for comparison (figuring it was probably a near-white coral sand), and pretty much split the difference for the overall white balance. Then I temporarily brought up saturation to near the max to get a handle on what colors might be present and where. I brought it back down, then added a gradient from the bottom and increased saturation in the orange-red part of the spectrum, along with texture (just a little—I wanted it to still look watery) and white point, and I reduced the black point. Then I used an auto-masked adjustment brush to darken and re-blue the distant water, which had been white-balanced to oblivion, and I used a very soft adjustment brush to reintroduce a blue-green gradient into the more distant corals to give some depth. Finally, I did some over-all tinkering: increased contrast, white point, and vibrance, and decreased black point.

I still can’t fully convince myself that what I think is the eel is actually the eel—is it gazing up toward the pointing finger, with its mouth open? If so, it sure looks like coral. If not, it looks even more like coral.

Great selection, Glenn. All work in PSE2020. Sorry, but due to a hiatus in my work on this image, I can't remember all the steps . I do recall the last 3, though: applied plastic wrap filter, modified colors, sharpened.