Another common problem for underwater photographers (particulaly those without strobes) is backscatter.  Just like the action that I posted that is good at fixing the loss of colours that happens underwater, there is also a very good action for removing backscatter.  I won’t go into much details, a video tutorial can be see here.  Here are before and after shots of what the action can do:

Before:

After:

The action is by Daniel Brown and can be downloaded here

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I see for the stats on the my blog a few people have searched for instructions as to how to install the underwater action into Photoshop CS3.  Something I should have posted orignally so here they are:

1: Open up Photoshop and display the action panel.  You can do this by clicking on Window -> Action or by pressing Alt+F9.

2: You should see default actions as the only action folder in that window.  You can load an action from anywhere it does not need to be in a particular folder for Photoshop to recognise it.  So, just below the close button on that window you should see a down arrow with 3 line next to it, click that and a menu will appear.

3: From that menu, select Load Actions.  Navigate to the folder where you action is and select Load.  You action will be loaded into Photoshop.

Simple as that.

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Following the discovery of the underwater action for Adobe Photoshop, I have re-edited some of my Gozo photos from this year and last year.  Only some of the photos actually look better once the action has been applied, others I have left as they where when I originally did them.

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Here is the download for the Underwater action for Photoshop CS3.  It’s freeware and available to download from here or from the Adobe Photoshop Exchange

The action is by James Connell

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I haven’t posted anything recently but I have been playing around more with my photos in Photoshop CS3.  I edit the better photos that I take with Photoshop CS3 to put back the red that is lost when diving.  Up until now I’ve had a variety of results – you can see the latest Gozo photos below.  I’ve now come across a action for Photoshop CS3 which has produced very different results, so I decided to post a comparison.

Here is the original, straight from my camera without any edits:

Here is the same photo edit the way I have always done it, by applying filters in Photoshop.  The colours are better, but still not quite there.

Here is the edit using the new ‘Underwater’ action I have discovered for Photoshop:

There is a great improvement in the colours using the Underwater action.  Not only are there improvments in terms of colour but also filesize (something to consider when posting images on the web), it’s almost 50% smaller. The fullsize original, pre-edit was 3.33MB, post-edit 1.47MB.

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