How to Edit Underwater Photos

So, you recently traveled to a tropical island, swam with sharks in pristine waters and even captured some epic shots of the experience. When you got home and went to edit the underwater photos, however, you noticed that the sharks and water all looked oddly green and blue. The shots may have even looked super hazy too. After messing around in Lightroom for hours to try and correct the odd colour palette, your underwater photos still looked just as strange as before. What gives?

Well, water naturally filters out red light, so, when you take photos underwater, your camera only picks up the green and blue hues. This means that your underwater photos, along with the marine life in them, will coming out looking a lot cooler than they looked when you experienced the scene through your snorkel mask.

You can actually buy red camera filters that you can put on your GoPro before you dive to help alleviate this problem. But, since you’re reading this article, I’m assuming it’s too late for that. But don’t worry. Your shark photos can be saved. You can easily edit underwater photos in Lightroom, quickly making them look more realistic and normal. All it takes is a few simple tweaks. Here’s how to edit underwater photos in Lightroom:

Adjust the White Balance

This, in my opinion, is probably the most important step when editing underwater photos. As water naturally filters out red hues, leaving mostly green and blue tones, your underwater images will naturally look cool. To combat this and make them look more normal, you will likely need to increase the warmth in the image and add a bit of magenta.

If there’s something in your image that is white or grey, like the fin or underside of a shark, you can simply click on it using the white balance dropper tool. Sometimes the dropper tool will give you a perfect white balance right away, or it will get you to a spot that’s pretty close, requiring a few minor adjustments.

If there isn’t anything white or grey and you’re left with just a green messy image, start sliding the warmth slider to the right, and then slowly add magenta into the image. Go back and forth between the two sliders until you start to see the blue or green tone fade away from the marine life in the shot. In particular, if you’re editing a photo of a shark, the animal should have more of a brown / grey colour tone. Once you’ve adjusted the temperature and tint to a level where the marine life and coral looks realistic, you can start to move onto some of the other tips outlined below, if required. Just as a heads up, the temperature and tint sliders can dramatically alter the colour of an image, so make adjustments slowly.

In the example images below, you can see that, in the first image without white balance adjustments, the sharks look blue, while the second image, with a few minor temperature and tint tweaks, make the sharks look a lot more true to colour. I should also note that I made some adjustments to the overall exposure of the image in the Light panel to give the image more contrast (showcased in the third image below).

Before adjusting the white balance.

After adjusting the white balance.

These are the edits that I made to the exposure of the image to give it more contrast.

Reduce the Blues and Aquas

As most underwater photos come out looking green and blue, I’ve found that it can be helpful to reduce the overall blue and green tones within the image - but you need to be careful with this one. Since water should look, well, blue, you may only want to desaturate the blue slider a bit (if at all).

The main slider that I like to desaturate is the aqua slider, as it sort of straddles the line between green and blue. When you desaturate the aqua slider, you’ll notice that the water remains blue and vivid, but some of that green / blue glow around the marine animals disappears.

Every underwater photo will be different, so experiment and adjust the intensity of the blues and aquas accordingly. In the example above, I desaturated the aquas and the purples, reduced the luminance in the blues to make the water more vivid, and desaturated the orange a bit to help further dial in the colour of the sharks.

Dehaze Sparingly

Subjects in underwater photos can appear hazy, especially if they’re farther in the distance. Lightroom has a dehaze tool, but it should be used sparingly (if at all).

The dehaze tool does wipe out some of the hazy effect in the water, but it also wipes out a lot of details within the image at the same time. It also tends to make the water a lot darker for some reason. If your subject is close in the shot and fairly clear, I would avoid using dehaze all together.

If your subject is far in the distance and they look super hazy, like a group of sharks swimming away, then you can try out the dehaze tool, but increase the amount of dehaze really slowly. The key is to make the subject(s) clear enough so that you can easily tell what they are without ruining the rest of the image. A small amount of dehaze should do the trick in this instance. Just remember, if a subject is far away in the water and looks hazy, no amount of dehaze is going to make the subject crystal clear. That’s just the nature of shooting photos in water. Do the best you can with a bit of dehaze and then move on.

In the example above, I didn’t use the dehaze feature, as the sharks already appeared fairly vivid after adjusting the exposure, white balance and overall colour of the image.

Mask Your Subject, if Necessary

Lastly, if you still feel like your subject’s colouring is off, you can use Lightroom’s masking tools to further adjust their white balance and colour tone.

If your subject is very prominent in the frame, like a shark, you can try Lightroom’s automatic subject detection masking tool. I’ve found this automatic mask is very good if there aren’t too many background elements and the subject stands out from the rest of the image.

If the subject mask doesn’t work, you can also use the brush tool and paint a mask around your subject instead. This can be a bit more tedious and tricky, but, if your shark photo isn’t looking like it should, spending the extra ten minutes masking the sharks and adjusting their tones will be worth it when you upload your shots to Instagram.

Masking can be particularly helpful when editing underwater photos if you’re happy with the colour of the water, but still feel like the subject(s) are too green and blue looking. When using masks, however, I’d still recommend adjusting the temperature and tint first, as that will really help bring the subject’s true colouring back to life. If further colour adjustments are required, you will need to use the hue slider within the mask panel, as the individual colour sliders are not available when using a mask. The hue slider can dramatically change the colour of your subject(s), so make adjustments slowly, if required.

Conclusion

Snapping photos underwater while swimming with sharks is tough enough, but editing the photos afterwards can be a lot more challenging. Water naturally filters out red light, so, when you snap photos underwater, you typically end up with green and blue looking shots. In Lightroom, you can easily edit underwater photos and make them look more normal. First, you can adjust the white balance, adding warmth and magenta to the image. Then, you can desaturate some of the aqua tones using the colour sliders. If your image needs further adjustments, try cautiously dehazing the shot, and then mask your subjects so that you can fine tune their colour tones as needed. When you’re done, take a look at your epic photos and reminisce about how epic it was to swim with such incredible marine life.