Now that summer is here, we are spending a lot of time in the pool or in some kind of water.   The kids can spend hours swimming, but frankly, I get a little bored after about 20 minutes.   So, I decided to purchase an underwater housing bag for my DSLR to keep myself entertained.  I wasn’t ready to invest in legit housing so I opted for the Zonman DSLR Waterproof Pouch on Amazon.  It was a little complicated to work with, but it got the job done!  I was able to take lots of pictures of my kids in the pool and even swimming in the ocean, all while keeping my camera safe and dry.   This takes lots of shooting, so be prepared for a bunch of crazy throw away images and a few decent ones!

Now comes the issue of editing underwater images.  When you photograph underwater everything tends to be very blue/green and a little hazy (depending on where you’re shooting)  There are lots of great options and methods of how to fix underwater images in Photoshop and in Lightroom, but I’m going to share how I edited these simply and  completely in Lightroom.

Here are a couple of before and afters.   You can see that the skin tones on the “before” are off and overall they need work!

Below is a screen shot of the Lightroom Settings that I used.  First, I began by using the Color Temperature eye dropper tool on a neutral part of the image (both times I used parts of their clothes) to get a more accurate white balance reading, then I adjusted it based on my liking.  As you can see from the panel on the left, I worked a lot with the Color (HSL) Panel to correct the colors of the skin and the water.  Something that you cannot see from the panel is that I used the local adjustments brush on the “Color” setting and I painted a bit on the skin to add more orange and warmth.  Underwater images usually need more contrast to make the subjects pop and I always add extra clarity.  Any other adjustments beyond that are purely aesthetic. I removed the extra set of feet on the first and adjusted the crop, etc.

I am by no means and master of underwater editing, but I enjoy learning new tips and I thought I’d share the methods that I have learned.   I hope you enjoy and I’d love to see some of your underwater images as well!