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Back to Basics – Part 6B: Exporting Underwater Photos for Social Media Without Losing Color or Detail (2026 Edition)

By Robert Herb Photography
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Why underwater photos can lose color and detail after social media compression – and how to fix it. When Your “WOW” Turns into “Why?” Oceanic Explorers, You nailed the shot. A beautiful hawksbill turtle glides gracefully through the clear blue waters off Roatan. The vibrant reef glows. The red colors are finally back. The water column looks perfectly smooth. In Lightroom, it looks exactly like you remember it. Now all that is left is to upload it to Instagram and share the moment. Suddenly: The blues look flat The reds look nuclear The shadows look muddy The fine coral texture looks soft And you wonder: “Why does this look different than Lightroom?” Here is the truth. Social media platforms aggressively compress, reinterpret, and rebuild your file. If you do not export correctly, they will do it for you. And they will not do it gently. In Part 6A, we focused on exporting underwater photos without losing quality. In Part 6B, we focus on exporting specifically for social media so your im...
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Back to Basics – Part 6A: Exporting Underwater Photos from Lightroom Without Losing Quality

By Robert Herb Photography
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Getting Your Underwater Photos Out of Lightroom Without Losing Quality An underwater image may look perfect inside Lightroom, but export settings determine how it appears on social media, in print, and everywhere else. If you’ve been following the Back-to-Basics series up to this point, you’ve spent a lot of time working inside Lightroom. You’ve learned how to build a solid foundation using proper white balance, tone, and color. You understand how clarity, texture, and dehaze can either enhance an image or quietly ruin it. You’ve learned when to stop and how selective masking allows you to refine an underwater photo without making it look artificial. By the end of Part 5G , you should feel confident that you can make an underwater photograph look right inside Lightroom. But this is where many photographers hit a frustrating wall. A photo that looked rich and balanced in Lightroom suddenly looks dull on Instagram. Blues shift. Reds disappear. Prints come back darker than expected. F...
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Location: Roatán, Bay Islands, Honduras
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Back to Basics – Part 5G: Putting It All Together, A Complete Lightroom Workflow for Underwater Photos and Video

By Robert Herb Photography
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Back to Basics – Part 5G: Putting it all together into a complete Lightroom workflow for underwater photos and video . If you've been following the Back-to-Basics series from the very beginning, you've already achieved something that most underwater photographers haven't fully mastered. You've gained a solid understanding of how Lightroom thinks. So far, we've broken down Lightroom into manageable, easy-to-understand components. We discussed why organization is crucial before diving into editing, how white balance sets the foundation for a good shot, how tone controls help shape the light, and how presence tools can either enhance or compromise detail. We also examined how still photos and videos behave very differently in Lightroom. This final post in Part 5 brings everything together. It's not about learning new tools or tricks. Instead, it's about applying what you already know consistently and repeatably. When you approach each dive shoot with this m...
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Location: Roatán, Bay Islands, Honduras
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Back To Basics – Part 5F: Masking And Selective Adjustments In Lightroom

By Robert Herb Photography
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A photo-realistic underwater photography header image illustrating masking and selective adjustments in Adobe Lightroom. The image shows a marine subject isolated from the background using AI Select Subject, linear gradients, and radial masks, demonstrating how selective adjustments refine underwater photos without over-processing. When, Why, and How to Refine Underwater Photos Without Overdoing It If you've been following the Back-to-Basics series so far, you're already familiar with how to create a strong underwater image using global adjustments. You know why white balance should be addressed first, how exposure and tone influence the light in your frame, how presence and detail tools can either bring out textures or, if used improperly, diminish them, and how color controls are essential for restoring realism underwater. At this point, your image should already be looking quite good. It's important to remember that masking isn't about fixing poorly taken images. Ins...
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Location: Roatán, Bay Islands, Honduras
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