How do I turn this sludge into beautiful blue water???

I took a bunch of pictures of my daughter the other day, and some came

out beautiful - especially after I had done some cropping and

retouching. But... I don't know what to do with some of them. This

one is a good example. How can I fix the water so that it looks less

swamplike? (I know the framing is a bit off - but I've got a bunch

more with this same nasty water.) How about something more Caribbean?

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<img src="http://www.bellesphotography.com/images/Review/Lake.jpg"><BR>

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Thanks everybody! Oh, and just in case it helps, I'm using Photoshop

version 8.0.

Mike, to me the whole picture looks off. I have tried to balance it to what must have been the

original colors. As you can see the water still looks green but that would be normal under the

cirumstances: green trees reflecting in the water and also a lot of algae in the water itself,

which is probably how it looked in reality. But maybe you are not interested in reality and

want to create a fairy tale? In that case you could replace all elements of the scene at will. Cut

out your daughter along her outer boundaries and the lines of the ledge she's sitting on and

she could even be beautiful in the Himalaya's when you paste a magnificent view behind her.

Here is my crude attempt using the lasso tool in Photoshop Elements 3.0 .<div></div>

How about this? Sun breaking through over your daughter on a misty day in Holland.

Eric: Okay... well, I'm not necessarily looking for utter fidelity to the original colors if that's what you mean. Here in West Texas everything is pretty much brown. Dead grass, dead trees, muddy water... you get the idea. I thought it would be nice if there was a way in Photoshop to rework the water to a more appealing - yet natural - look. Call it a fantasy, call it art, call it Photoshop trickery... whatever. I'm pretty much a novice (but learning fast) at Photoshop. I thought it was a chance to learn a little more about the potential from you guys that have been doing it for years.

 

Robert: At least it doesn't look like Swamp-Thing may be lurking behind her anymore. It does make me want to rethink this whole West Texas thing too...

Mike: try selecting the water using a combination of contiguous magic wand and lasso, then create a new adjustment layer, either color balance, hue/saturation, or curves, depending on what you are more familiar with.

 

Then you can adjust the water color to your hearts content without affecting the rest of the picture.<div></div>

not quite the color it should be....but hue/sat, turned the hue till I got what I wanted. This will color the whole pic....don't worry. Then click ok. Then in the history click back to your previous step in the long rectangle part, then click on your hue conversion in the little box to the left. I history brush icon will pop up in there then. Then click the history brush option in the tool box. Set a relatively small brush with a very wide feather to it. Then take your cursor, which will now be a cirle the size of your brush, and holding donw the alt key paint in the water. I also screwed around with curves to get things there and else where where it looked better.<div></div>

Globally took out about -7 red in Colour Balance in the highlights.

 

Then selected the water and played around with Selective Colour, mainly the Neutrals and a bit in the Yellows.

 

Lastly selected the trees and bridge and took out about another -5 in the red highlights. Then gave them a -2 shift in Hue in the Hue/Saturation box.<div></div>

One more with a bit more saturation....<div></div>

of course, the best solution is probably to not shoot with water in the background. In southern NJ we have "cedar water"...looks like brown tea. Unless the sun is shining exactly at the right angle to light up the brown so it glows.......I avoid it as a background like the plague.

Thanks everybody! I have a lot to play with... Photoshop is incredible, but I feel like I'll never be able to master half of what's possible. I appreciate everyone's feedback. I'll just have to keep trolling the boards and picking up tips here and there... and who knows, maybe one day I'll give up on the whole thing and just move to Holland ;-)

hey mike. is this what you are looking for? bressane | <a href=http://www.pixelretouch.com target=_blank>www.pixelretouch.com</a><div></div>

The photo's white balance is way off. Easily fixed using adjustment layer of either curves or levels and then using the three eydropper tools to set the shadow, highlight, and midpoint neutrals. Here's my quick attempt.<div></div>

Assign CIERGB, apply neutral eyedropper in curves to different

areas of the white fence to your satisfaction, apply about -15

saturation in Hue/Saturation tool, convert to sRGB.

 

Here's my result:

Try another approach, lasso the background and desaturate completely, then add back some sepia to the background which would go nice with the face. The logic is if the background doesn't work very well, then try for another approach altogether.

The color balance is fine. Warm and yellow is how low angled sunlight really looks on a clear day. I rather dislike the auto levels route to color correction as light is rarely white. Instead, it is often slightly blue, slightly yellow, and etcetera. The warm light of early mornings and late afternoons feels so good on the eyes. It definitely beats givng a sickly blue cast to the shadows.

 

That said, I would suggest filling a layer with green (these are not blue waters to my eyes), setting the blending mode to hue, and then painting on the hue using a layer mask.

 

A variant is included.

 

enjoy,

 

Sean<div></div>

There's some detail I left about the options settings in curve

dialog box that influences the neutral eyedropper tool. I also

came up with a richer version in AdobeRGB that preserves

luminance and left more precise instructions I wrote in the linked

image:

Erik clearly has the best idea! ;-)

Mike,

To my eyes the reds are far too high in the image. Open levels (CTRL+L) and start adjusting! Firstly, this is a far simpler way of going about things and secondly, it will give a far more natural look rather than painting the water bright blue.

 

You can always make a few duplicate layers and adjust each individually, (e.g. you may want to up the blues a bit more in the water while keeping a slightly warmer look to your daughter) and then combine the various parts of these afterwards.

 

Obviously everyone will have a slightly different opinion of what looks 'right', at the end of the day it is what you are happy with!

 

Matt<div></div>

Interesting that 8-9 of 12 corrections show different-color water

to the left and right of the porch-post, which to my eye looks worse

than the original. Kudos to Frank Dzambic for not doing this,

although I prefer Bill Fouche's version otherwise.

Convert to LAB mode and add an adjustment layer of curves. Invert the "B" channel in the curves dialog box (What was blue is now yellow, what was yellow is now blue). Click Ok. Since you are now working in the layer mask of the adjustment layer, paint with black to hide the effect. Flatten and convert back to RGB.

 

Furhter questions drop me a note.

 

Will

 

Adobe CTT Photoshop<div></div>

That's clever, Will.

lAB & selective colour - That's a new one for me Will. Many thanks<div></div>

I agree that the white balanace is a little off. But I looks like you are starting from a pretty

murky little pond, so that won't fix everything.

 

Its not perfect, but here's my 5 minute attempt. First, I moved the white balance a little

away from red. I have a blue-gray gradient color blended into the water (with mid

opacity), a blue-green filter (again, with a lower opacity) color blended over the entire

image (but with your daughter and the rest of the foreground masked out) to simulate

reflectance from the now blue-ish water. I might have toyed with the saturation level of

the water after that. Its all pretty subtle, but if you start attempting to create turquoise

pools, you are going to spend the rest of your life simulating reflectance in the rest of the

image, else its just going to look fake. Instead be happy that you have a normal pond

instead of a green swamp.

actually bill, the water is a different shade of brown in the original post on each side of her, so I left it. I do however completely admit that my choice of blue sucks....Mike can adjust that to taste...I was really just showing a use of painting with a history brush. Definitely less destructive than the lasso, magic wand scenarios. One question I do have though, seeing as Emre showed up.....is my histogram brush method more, less, or the same as doing the same basic thing in layers/brush painting. I've seen comments on the web that both are actually about the same as far as image degradation goes.

 

anyone know for sure?