I have had a lot of questions lately about the editing for my Underwater Photography. I thought it would be fun to share some before and after images to show you all a little bit of what goes into it. One of the things I love about Underwater Photography is that I am pretty much living in the pool these days!! But that also comes with quite a bit of late night editing work.  Underwater Editing is *very* different than editing land photos.  It has been quite the learning curve ~ but now that I am getting the hang of it, I am really starting to love it!

I edit my photos in Photoshop Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and do a majority of my major adjustments with the color sliders.  Of course I adjust my shadows and highlights – generally not much on contrast and blacks though (big difference from land work!).  I add a little clarity (sometimes a lot depending on how far away I was from the subject) and sharpen the image.

On land I shoot custom White Balance, but Underwater I shoot on Auto White Balance and adjust in ACR.  I tend to bring my overall White Balance down pretty cool, bring my magenta up, and then select the subject using the Radial Filter Tool to warm the skin tones back up.  My pool is a dark blue Pebble Tec to start with – so that helps me achieve the deep blue tones that I love!

Do you want to hear more about how I edit my Underwater work?  Leave a comment below!  Maybe I’ll do a live editing video soon on Instagram‘s new IGTV!

This was a fun little session I did in Charlotte just before I left for our California Adventure.  What is the biggest difference you see in the before and after?  Does it surprise you how different they are?