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Many times, if I’m getting my exposures right, and there is adequate lighting, i.e., I’m not too deep and the visibility is not too poor, the resulting photos will clean up nicely with a simple levels adjustment and maybe an added contrast curve. Then there are the other times when maybe the lighting was not quite right, or there are some challenging camouflage issues between fish and reef, where a photo may require several specialized adjustments. In addition some of the adjustment layers may also require special masking. Some layers my even need to be duplicated and treated with special sharpen or blur filters. This mantis shrimp photo at left happened to be such an image. The final has one Levels adjustment, one Selective Color and one Curves. The selective color and curves are masked to affect only the shrimp or the background, and a duplicate background layer is treated with filters and masks to further separate the background from the subject.

I will walk through these steps and touch on various reasonings for the actions taken. The first move is levels, seen below right, next to the original. Much of the blue-green cast is removed, but not so much as to completely disguise the fact that the scene is underwater. But now something else catches my eye. In my memory of the dive this creature was brightly colored. Moving from the largest problems to the smallest, I’ve addressed the levels and now move to the more specific problem of cleaning up the creatures brighter colors. I’m choosing a selective color adjustment layer to deal specifically with the saturated colors of the subject shrimp. Under the color cast of the ocean our minds “fool” our eyes into seeing these colors more brightly than the camera initially captures them. The color information is still there to be captured by the camera and brought out with Photoshop, or our minds wouldn’t know how to “fill in the blanks” in our perception.

The example below left shows this saturated color move, and how it affected the yellows of the shell and razors, and the blues of the feet. But he is perfectly camouflaged to his environment so the move also affected his surroundings, warming the rocks and pebbles giving the scene a warmer look than the March day really was. Solution, I need to add a mask to the selective color adjustment layer that would mask out the background. This way only the shrimp will be affected. Below right I’ve added the mask and the shrimp gets a color boost but the background remains.

Still the image is lacking, the subject itself needs a curve to boost and add contrast. A curve that masks out the background, and so this is applied to the image below left. But still the shrimp doesn’t stand out enough on it’s own. The focus is too constant across the whole shot and the background comes off as being way too sharp. So the background image is duplicated as a layer to be given just a slight and realistic lens blur, shown below right.

Finally, as shown below, the same background mask is inverted and used to mask out the blurred shrimp revealing the original focused shrimp from beneath with a beautiful, subtle lens blur over the entire pebbly background.

It is important to realize when not to use sharpening as a means of making your subject “pop” from the background. Digital photography can be considered over sharp as a rule. A more professional approach is to slightly blur the background.

All images and text ©2009 Daniel Mendoza photoshopdiver.com. All rights reserved.