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This is short tutorial to show you how I make quick edits to some of my underwater photos. Most underwater pictures will have a green or cyan color cast that needs to be removed and light/detail that needs to emphasized. This process is very easy to do using Photoshop and can take less than three minutes per photo.

Original image (left) and image after quick edit in Photoshop (right) - It may be hard to see the difference in the two photos if your browser doesn’t read embedded color spaces.

First, I make a duplicate layer of my background to work with.

Next create a new blank layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Color Balance

This is where you can remove most of the color cast that underwater photos will have. Generally, I will increase my reds and decrease my blues. Just play around with the sliders until you are happy with the result. *Keep in mind - you will also be able to reduce your color cast later using Selective Color.

Next highlight your duplicated background layer. This is where I use a third party filter called Nik Filters. Open Nik Filters from your Filter menu and select Sunshine. Try selecting the four Light-Casting Algo to see which one looks the best for your picture. I generally use A or D(off). Click Ok.

Most of the time the Sunshine effect is too much for the photo and looks unnatural. Most often I will highlight my Sunshine Layer and reduce the Opacity to my liking.

Next create a new blank layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Selective Color

Here you can take more control of individual colors within your image. I find for underwater images you need to increase your magenta (within the Cyans) and also add some yellow. The best thing to do is to experiment with all the colors and all the sliders. See what works best for you.

The last thing I do to my underwater images is increase the contrast. (You will need to flatten your image before doing this or merge your background and sunshine layers together).

Highlight the flattened layer and go to: Image>Adjustments>Contrast

I will generally increase the contrast of an image with the amount depending on the picture itself.

That’s it. This is one way to quickly improve the quality of an underwater image.