White Balanace / Photo Shop

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The Kraken:
I'm thinking it was a *.RAF format ???

Too tired to mess with it tonight.

Downloaded the RAWShooter Essentials, you have to register it before you can use it, but it won't let me register it.

Looks as if I'm relegated to a life of *.jpg files.
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For what it's worth, my Nikon puts out raw files with a .NEF extension. Depends on the camera, but .RAF sounds like the name of a RAw File.

Thanks to the inspiration of this thread, I finally started playing with PhotoShop Elements 3.0's raw converter. In the past I've just taken the default settings and tried to clean things up from there, usually without much success. But with Elements you get a first shot at adjusting the parameters before storing the file in Adobe's .PSD format. Here's a sample. Don't ask why the first one is so blue.
 
Kraken,

My advice still stands, and no, I was not suggesting that RAW is not worth it, and neither was I insulting anyone's intelligence. I would persevere with the new plug-ins or whatever it takes on your system to shoot and edit in RAW, and then you decide for yourself whether you want to use it for all your shots, or some, or none.
 
There's no reason RawShooter essentials shouldn't let you register. It's free. Just make sure you fill in all the required lines. You can also download it a second time if you need to. I did. It will require a fairly current computer. My old Athlon 950 was missing a file in the bios that was needed to run it. It works great, lets you adjust WB as either camera WB or by clicking on a point on the picture that you want to be the WB spot, or it will estimate WB for you. It also is easy to use. All slider bars, and lots of parameters plus and 80 page set of directions built in.
 
Tortuga Roja:
I agree. If you don't have raw available, manual WB is the way to go. I shoot raw but since I can do a manual WB with one button push, I do. That way the review pic is closer to what I will get when I post process later. I have had camera that were a PITA too. Gotta go thru a series of menus every time. They obviously weren't thinking of us poor UW people when they designed that.
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Hi Mike:

Good advice. Even though I shoot raw, I try to pay attention to my WB setting to avoid too much of a temp and tint tweak in the Adobe Raw Coverter. I hardly ever use the custom WB function. Underwater it would work like this. Remove white slate from BCD, shoot picture of white slate, autofocus doesn't work so remove dome port and switch to manual focus (collect insurance on flooded camera .... just kidding!), push menu key, scroll to Custom WB, select Custom WB, scoll to slate pic, set custom WB, push AF-WB button, select Custom WB .... now where the heck did that fish go? What did I do with the slate?

How it should work. Remove slate, point camera at slate, push custom WB button, put slate back in BCD, shoot fish pic. Are you listening Canon? So you have a camera that will do this? What is it?

---Bob
 
Gilligan:
If you have no manual white balance setting on your camera and don't have or don't want to use RAW you can use this process in Photoshop to correct photos taken without a strobe on "auto" white balance.
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That is fantastic! Thanks Gilligan!
 
Very informative thread. New to UW photography, but do understand white balance. Any recommendations on what type/kind of white card or slate to use, and any other techniques on properly using it underwater for the best results?
Regards to all -- Mach
 
 
There are some nice shots in there, K... on a few of them, the colors look a little over-processed. Did you use photoshop on them heavily? Or is that the output of the underwater PS action linked above?
 
I used the link to restore the red.
Most of those shots were taken available light at 75' or deeper.

There are actually my first two attempts with the camera.

As to the setup, I'm very, very happy with the rig.

Compact, easy to use, good resolution.

Accessing the menus can be problematic at first, but once one gets accustomed to knowing where the sub menus are, it becomes quite facile.

the K
 
I am going to make the move to shoot in RAW and use PhotoShop CS2 to edit. Since I will be shooting RAW, what should the camera's White Balance be set at...Auto? Does it matter?

Manually setting the WB with a slate is pretty impossible with my Canon 20D (won't autofocus). I used it with my Olympus 5050 with great success but don't on my Canon, hense why I'm moving to RAW (among other reasons).

Thanks.
 
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