Entry

Aquariums and Photoshop, It’s Not What You Think

Across marine forum communities, blogs, and websites there is a serious stigma against photoshop. The thought being that it is used to overly enhance photos to unrealistic and unachievable qualities. Adobe Photoshop is a powerful tool and can be used to distort reality, but it, along with other image editors, is a much needed post [...]

Across marine forum communities, blogs, and websites there is a serious stigma against photoshop. The thought being that it is used to overly enhance photos to unrealistic and unachievable qualities. Adobe Photoshop is a powerful tool and can be used to distort reality, but it, along with other image editors, is a much needed post process tool for the aquarium photographer. If you take photos of your aquarium I would strongly encourage looking into a photo editing program like photoshop or similar programs touched on here.

Photoshop

If you’re not ready to drop $700 to try out the latest Adobe Photoshop CS4 there are less costly and free options available. Namely the 30-day free trial Adobe offers on the software. If you’d rather not be teased by such an offer, completely free online programs exist such as Photoshop.com. This website is a light weight online photo editor that is free to use and even includes storage space. The power is no where near the full version, but it is enough to be useful. (Also worth checking out is Google’s Picasa).

Apeture Screen Capture

Shown above is Apple’s program Aperture. Aperture is a terrific photo organization tool that offers editing as well. Adobe offers a similar program called Lightroom. Bother Aperture and Lightroom work great as a standalone program or paired with Photoshop for heavier editing. [Check out Tony Wu's tips on workflow keywording marine life photos with the marine life keywords database].

Lastly we have GIMP. An acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program, GIMP is completely free and is extremely similar to photoshop. Although less popular than photoshop, as a free program GIMP has attracted a sizable user base that offers tutorials and orientations around the web.

GIMP

GIMP screen shot

Photoshop and similar image editors are an important post-process tool. With the popularity of the 20K blue look, cameras often struggle to capture the colors we see. (RAW files and white balance are your friends). With such editing, ethics can be crossed, but if done properly no one will notice that you even use the program–just go easy on the saturation adjustments. That’s not to say photoshop has not been used to make corals and fish appear overly vibrant to spur sales. Unfortunately that does happen, but don’t let the few spoil the use of photoshop. It is not a bad word and it is okay to say that you use it. If you’re not already using a photo editor, try one out.

We’ll have more on photoshop specifically relating to aquarium photography, but until then I’ll propose a question. Many state the goal of a photographer is to make an image look better than it actually does in real life; after all the corals we keep look nothing like they do in the ocean. Do you believe the goal of aquarium photography is to capture the moment as we see it, or make it look better than it does in reality?


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Meta

  • Very cool article, It is sometimes hard to capture the true color even with an slr camera, post editing is very important to bring back the true color of what you see with the naked eye
  • Nicholas Sadaka
    @Mike-I actually tried with and without flash and sometimes one way would come out a bit better than the other, but I couldn't get even close with color whether using the flash or not. I wonder if maybe they'd have come out better if I took them from above the aquarium with no glass to penetrate, but while some things like the clam look better from above, Tangs definitely do not. It would just be cool if their was an easy way to capture exactly what you see (or at least close to it) without having to dump thousands of dollars into a camera and being a professional photographer. It's funny because I can now tell the retailers who have the photoshop capabilities or real nice cameras and those that do not. I see some retailers that seem to have the exact same issues I do and it's a shame for both the customer and retailer because a customer is going to always look for the great colored creature and the retailer my have just that coral but can't capture the image to prove it.
  • The goal of all photography should be to deliver what was seen. Producing an image that is "better than it looks in reality" is photographic art and should be labeled as such. The skill in photography is to be able to find, recognize, and capture good light on an interesting subject. When that is accomplished, and coupled with good composition, the photographer should not have to make the image better than was seen.

    When it comes to reef aquarium photography, correcting the white balance is essential. But once that is done, additional "manipulation" of the image should be limited to levels, shadow/highlight, contrast, and, to a very limited degree, saturation adjustments (sometimes you have to back off on saturation to allow detail to show). If the starting point is a RAW image, and it should be, sharpening will also be required.

    It's unfortunate that Photoshop has become a "four-letter word" in reef aquarium photography, primarily because unscrupulous coral sellers will do anything to make a buck, including deceiving the customer. There is not much that can be done about it other than to point out when images are not an accurate representation of reality and identify those who deceive.

    BTW, for basic image post-processing, Photoshop Elements will do everything you need for a lot less money than Photoshop. Also, if you are a student or have family members who are students or employed in education, educator discounts are an excellent way to save a ton of money on software. My favorite source, when I was teaching, is www.academicsuperstore.com

    Gary
  • @ Nicholas - It sounds like you were using a flash? The flash is essentially around a 3k light source that will make corals appear brown. Except for fish, flashes are generally not used for aquarium photography (for fish they are almost a must, in order to shoot at the high shutter speed to "freeze" the fish).

    @ Eric - to your last question. I believe it can be either. Capturing exactly what the human eye sees is EXTREMELY difficult, and an art form in and of itself. On the other hand, it is possible to take a beautiful photo that looks better than real life, without it looking "fake" (i.e., oversaturated, blue egg crate/sand, etc.).
  • Nat
    Purple hands!!!
  • Nicholas Sadaka
    I'm admittedly not a photo guy or very much of a computer guy but I do like taking pictures of my aquarium and it's occupants to share with friends. I recently did so with my very affordable $100 Kodak camera that really does take fantastic pics for how much it costs. When I took pictures of our backyard pond, they looked fantastic and everything looked as it did when I was looking at the same thing with my eyes. However, when I went to take aquarium pics, I had great difficulty showing my aquarium inhabitants the way I see them with my eyes. I use 150 watt 10K MH's and Actinic VHO's and the pics either looked overy bright or overly dull. The only thing that seemed to come out somewhat true to form was my Crocea Clam. My blue tangs looked so neon that they appear to be glowing. My beautiful Acropora Tortuosa which is a mix of beautiful greens and blue with a tiny tan underlying color showed almost no greens or blues and looked almost completely tan. A very bright green monti also came out looking tannish. I use to hate the thought of buying photoshopped creatures, but now I certainly understand the need for either that or maybe just a much better camera than I have. It was interesting to see those color differences though-shocking to me, really.
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