We are so multilingual here, that this post is in English (by me, Klaus), and in Cantonese, by our Divemaster candidate Cortex.
Yesterday I took some pictures on the Savedra house reef of new freedinving ace Cortex. She had a really good time doing flips, rolls, and gliding along the reef without any gear to slow her down. But since Cortex is not only an aspiring Divemaster and a good free diver, but also a pro photographer (with a photography degree from the University of Mancao) we decided to both post-process the images. So here you have it: one photograph, two photographers doing the post-processing, two images as a result.
What did we do differently: First of all Cortex used Photoshop, and I used RawTherapee & Gimp. The later two programs are shareware, so you don’t have to pay for them, although you can make a donation to the developers if you like. I don’t, however, think that the software made a big difference.
What I did in RawTherapee was to adjust the color balance so that Cortex’s skin color looked natural. I then increased the vibrance to make her stand out some more. I also sharpened the image to a moderate level, and applied some noise reduction. All of that is necessary because the images come out of my
as “Raw” images: the camera does not modify them to a degree like point & shoot cameras do. I need to apply the sharpening myself.
Then, in Gimp, I removed a few small speckles of backscatter, and done I was.
Top, post processed by Cortex, bottom, post-processed by Klaus.
I think Cortex went more for a “striking” than a “natural” look, as compared to my post processing, and hence her use of a more funky color space. But, in her own words:
一張照片，兩種風格
昨天，Klaus（來自奧地利，他是名仕潛水員訓練官，同時也是一名專業的醫生，也是一位水底攝影能手）和我（Cortex)約定了在Savedra潛店出來的潛水點進行水底攝影，我很喜歡free diving，一種挑戰身體極限的運動，享受露出水面時大口氣大口氣呼吸的節奏。 這張照片時Klaus用5DMARKII拍的，而後期分別是我和Klaus，我還原了圖片的細節，令沙丁魚，珊瑚礁更加清晰，而顏色方面，由於海底偏藍，我調整了照片的白平衡，令人物膚色還原正常顏色。
而Klaus更是細節地處理了圖片人物皮膚的細節，風格方面他喜歡溫和一點的顏色。
