This is what I suggest for the camera:
This is what I suggest in Photoshop for blanket, basic adjustments:
- Shoot in RAW mode.
- Shoot in Aperture Priority mode... which is Av on a Canon.
- ISO around 400 - 800
- For white balance, shoot in Kelvin mode... crank it all the way up to 10,000
- Then adjust WB correction/shift to suite your lighting. For mine, I use a WB shift of around B3, G3
- First open in the RAW editor and adjust your white balance if needed. You may need to shift it a little to make it look like what you are seeing with your eyes.
- You can also adjust contrast, vibrance, saturation etc in the RAW editor. I usually bump those up a few spots... maybe a tad more. Depends on the shot, but I adjust to what it looks like with my eyes.
- You may need to tick the clarity up a tad too, but nothing drastic at all.
- Now you can open the photo within Photoshop.
- Go to the Spot Healing Brush Tool and remove any of the little particles that you see. These will be very pronounced on a black background. They are simply particles in the water column that are difficult to see with the eye and the fact that they are moving around in the water column. But when you take the shot, they will stand out because the camera catches it in still form and can even blur the particles depending on the length of the shutter.
- Once you get rid of all of the little specs and whatnot, then go ahead and crop the image if necessary.
- At this point, make sure to click on Layer > Merge Visible
- Lastly, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Usually a setting around 100 - 200 will do the trick. You can click on the preview button and see the before and after. Don't go too high as it just won't look natural.
So those are just easy, basic adjustments to get your image looking like what you see with your eyes. I do other stuff sometimes, but not too much... I don't get crazy with it. However, I make take 200 photos and only get a handful that are acceptable. NOTE: I just dabble in photography, so I don't really know that much lol.
Thanks for this. This helps a lot for camera newbies.