Robert Herb Photography Blog

Better underwater edits start with a repeatable system. The Consistent Underwater Editing System follows six steps: White Balance, Exposure, Presence, Color, Masking, and Final Adjustments. Most underwater photographers do not struggle because they are missing some magical Lightroom slider that will instantly fix their images.  Instead, they struggle because they lack a repeatable editing system they can rely on.  When they open an underwater photo, they often notice it looks flat, with a bluish or greenish hue, hazy, or dull. In response, they start making adjustments in various areas, such as White Balance. They might tweak the Exposure a bit, increase Vibrance, add some Clarity, apply a mask, boost Saturation, or try different combinations.  Sometimes the image starts working; other times, it still doesn't look quite right. This inconsistency is what makes underwater editing particularly frustrating. One image might come together quickly, looking natural and vibrant, w...

Color works best after the image has structure. In underwater editing, white balance, exposure, and presence create the foundation before color refinement begins. You finish a dive, download your images, and feel excited about what you captured. Maybe it was a turtle gliding over the reef, a colorful nudibranch, a dramatic wreck scene, or a diver framed perfectly against the blue water. On the back of the camera, the image looked promising. Then you open the photo in Lightroom. Suddenly, the excitement fades a little. The image looks dull, blue, green, flat, or lifeless. The colors you remember from the dive seem to have disappeared. The subject does not stand out the way it did underwater. The scene lacks depth, contrast, and impact. You know there is a good photograph hiding in the file somewhere, but it is not immediately obvious how to bring it out. So the first instinct is to go straight for color. Add some Vibrance. Push Saturation. Move the Color Mixer sliders. Try a preset. War...

Presence tools can add depth and detail, but only after White Balance and Exposure have built a solid foundation. Most underwater photographers know the feeling. You bring an image into Lightroom, and it looks flat. The subject is there. The composition is good. The dive was beautiful. But the photo feels dull, soft, and lifeless. So the instinct is to reach for the sliders that seem like they should fix it. Texture. Clarity. Dehaze. Vibrance. At first, the image may look better. It has more punch. More contrast. More color. More detail. But then something starts to feel wrong. The water looks heavy. The subject looks crunchy. The colors start to feel fake. Backscatter becomes more obvious. The image looks edited instead of improved. That is one of the biggest differences between editing underwater photos and editing landscape, portrait, or architecture images. Above the surface, Presence tools often add polish. Below the surface, they can magnify problems. That is...

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. 📘  Start here:   The Complete Guide to Editing Underwater Photos in Lightroom 👉 https://robertherb.blogspot.com/2026/03/editing-underwater-photos-lightroom-guide.html 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 h...

📘  New here:  Start with the full workflow:  The Complete Guide to Editing Underwater Photos in Lightroom 👉 https://robertherb.blogspot.com/2026/03/editing-underwater-photos-lightroom-guide.html White balance is the foundation of every successful underwater edit. Before making any adjustments to exposure, contrast, or sharpness, it's essential to first correct the  color bias caused by water depth, water type, and lighting conditions . When the white balance is off, subsequent processing becomes more difficult to predict and less precise.  In this Back-to-Basics series, white balance is the first step in the Develop module. It comes after culling, organization, and Library work, but before any tonal adjustments. This post  focuses on  practical white balance techniques tailored for underwater photographers , rather than  general Lightroom theory. Why White Balance Matters More Underwater Than on Land    On land, auto white balance usua...