Before and After: 10 Underwater Photos Transformed Step by Step

When I show a before-and-after edit during a workshop, there is always a moment of silence. Then the same question: "but what exactly did you change?". The answer is rarely spectacular. Three sliders, sometimes four. White balance, a curve, a touch of Dehaze. That is it.

Underwater editing is not magic. It is compensation. The water stole colours, you take them back. The RAW file holds the information, Lightroom reveals it. Here are 10 real photos, taken on real dives, with the exact adjustments that transformed each one.

For the complete editing workflow behind these examples, see the full Lightroom guide.

A classic scene: a green turtle ascending towards the surface in crystal-clear water, sunlight from above. The RAW is blue, correctly exposed overall, with the shell pulling towards green-brown instead of the warm brown you could see underwater.

!Before and after edit of a green turtle in clear water, Cyprus

The adjustments applied: White balance from 4500K to 6200K (+15 magenta tint). Exposure +0.3 (slightly underexposed due to partial backlight). Dehaze +18 (clear water, little diffusion). Red curve raised in the shadows to recover the browns of the shell. HSL: orange saturation +12, blue luminance -8 to darken the background water slightly.

Result: the shell recovers its warm tones, the green of the turtle's skin separates from the green of the water, and the blue background gains depth. Total time: 3 minutes.

A colourful reef in clear tropical water, shot in natural descending light. The RAW is the simplest case: slightly blue, but the colours are almost there already. The shallow depth preserved most of the wavelengths.

The adjustments: White balance from 4800K to 5800K (+8 magenta tint). Exposure unchanged. Dehaze +12. No curve modified (the information is already in the file). HSL: red saturation +8 and orange saturation +10 to bring the soft corals back to life. Clarity +15 for reef texture.

This case illustrates an important point: at shallow depth in clear water, editing is minimal. It proves that natural light is enough when you are close to the subject and near the surface. No flash needed for a reef at 5 metres under the Maldives sun.

The most common scenario in the Mediterranean: an interesting subject (a large curious grouper, almost motionless) in dim light at 22 metres. The RAW is dark blue-green, the grouper blending almost entirely into the rocky background.

!Before and after edit of a grouper in deep Mediterranean water

The adjustments: White balance from 4200K to 7000K (+22 magenta tint). Exposure +1.2 (the photo was significantly underexposed). Shadows +45 (to reveal detail in the dark zones of the grouper's body). Dehaze +32 (lots of particles between the lens and the subject). Red curve raised noticeably in both shadows and midtones. Blue curve lowered in the shadows. Luminance noise reduction 25 (the pushed exposure revealed grain).

This type of edit is the one that impresses beginners most, but it also tests the limits of RAW. Beyond 25 metres without artificial light, even a good RAW file no longer has enough signal in the red channel for a clean correction.

The perfect counterexample. Photo taken while snorkelling at 1 metre depth, sun in front, a school of silvery salema porgy in clear water. The RAW is almost perfect straight out of the sensor.

The adjustments: White balance unchanged (4600K, correct for the depth). Exposure -0.2 (slight overexposure from surface reflections). Highlights -40 (to recover detail in the reflective scales). Clarity +20 for fish definition. Nothing else.

This example is in the list for a pedagogical reason: sometimes the best edit is the one you do not make. Snorkelling, in clear water, under the sun, the camera captures almost exactly what the eye sees. The temptation to "edit anyway" is the trap.

Belgian green water, the hardest case in this series. A freshwater sponge on a rock wall in a quarry. The RAW is uniformly dark green, the sponge barely visible.

!Before and after edit of a sponge in Belgian green water

The adjustments: White balance from 4500K to 7800K (+35 magenta tint). Exposure +0.8. Dehaze +42 (heavily loaded water). Red curve strongly raised in shadows and midtones. Green curve lowered by 12 points in the midtones. HSL: green desaturated -20, green hue shifted +15 towards cyan, orange saturation +25 for the sponge. Luminance noise reduction 30.

The sponge goes from "indistinct dark blotch" to bright orange main subject on a grey-green background. The correction is aggressive but justified: the information was in the RAW, it was just buried under 12 metres of phytoplankton. The water stays green, the sponge recovers its colour. That is revelation, not invention.

Underwater backlight is a special editing case. A diver seen against the light in the Cerbere-Banyuls marine reserve, sun filtering down from the surface, posidonia seagrass beds in the foreground.

The adjustments: White balance slightly corrected to 5500K (+10 magenta). Exposure -0.3 (protect the sun's highlights). Highlights -60 (recover detail in the sun zone). Shadows +55 (reveal the diver's silhouette and the seagrass). Red curve slightly raised only in the deep shadows. Dehaze +15.

Underwater backlight does not get corrected like a "normal" photo. The goal is not to recover every colour but to preserve the dramatic contrast between the dark silhouette and the bright background. Too much correction destroys exactly what makes the image powerful.

Natural-light macro at 16 metres. A small nudibranch (Flabellina affinis, purple and orange) perched on a hydroid colony. The RAW is blue-purple, the nudibranch details are present but the colours are muted.

The adjustments: White balance from 4300K to 6800K (+18 magenta). Exposure +0.5. Dehaze +25. Red curve moderately raised. HSL: purple saturation +15, orange saturation +12. Sharpening 85 with Masking at 65 (to sharpen only the nudibranch, not the blurred background). Tight crop to eliminate the empty blue water around the subject.

The crop transformed this photo more than any slider. The original framed too wide (imperfect buoyancy, hesitation to get closer). Cutting 40% of the image to keep only the nudibranch and its substrate turned a documentary shot into a macro photograph. This is one of the editing principles I come back to in the composition guide.

The Zenobia, seen from inside. Rusted metal structure at 18 metres. The RAW is monochrome blue-green, the metal texture invisible.

The adjustments: White balance from 4400K to 7200K (+20 magenta). Exposure +0.7. Shadows +50 (many very dark zones inside the wreck). Dehaze +35. Red curve strongly raised to recover the rusts and oxides. Blue curve lowered in the shadows. Clarity +25 for metal texture. Noise reduction 20.

Wreck rust is an excellent editing test. If the red channel of the RAW contains information (shot close enough, not too deep), Lightroom can recover stunning oranges and browns. If the file contains only noise in the red channel (too deep, too far), the correction produces coloured grain with no detail. Knowing the difference is knowing when to push and when to accept the blue.

A posidonia seagrass bed in late afternoon, golden raking light crossing through the shallow water. The RAW is bright but flat, lacking contrast.

The adjustments: White balance from 4700K to 5200K (+5 magenta, very little correction). Exposure -0.3 (protect the highlights). Contrast +15. Clarity +20 for the texture of the posidonia leaves. HSL: green saturation +10, yellow +8. Dehaze +8 only. Crop to a 16:9 panoramic format.

The lesson of this photo: in very shallow water at the end of the day, natural light does the work on its own. The raking sun creates a natural contrast between lit and shadowed zones. The edit only accentuates what is already there.

The great classic. A magnificent anemone, an orange clownfish in a blue tropical setting at 10 metres. The RAW is well exposed but the clownfish orange is dull and the anemone pulls brown instead of purple.

The adjustments: White balance from 4600K to 6000K (+12 magenta). Exposure +0.3. Dehaze +15. Red curve raised in the shadows. HSL: orange saturation +15 (the clownfish), purple saturation +10 (the anemone), blue luminance -10 (darken the background to make the subject pop). Sharpening 75 with Masking 55.

The danger here is oversaturating the clownfish orange. In my workshops, this is the mistake I correct most often: the photographer pushes orange to +40 or +50 because "clownfish are bright orange". They are, at the surface. At 10 metres, their orange is naturally less saturated than in our memories. A saturation of +15 compensates for the water. Beyond that, you start inventing.

Every photo is different, but the workflow is the same. White balance first. Exposure and tones second. Per-channel curves for targeted corrections. Dehaze for global contrast. HSL for precision. Sharpening and noise last.

The settings change because water type, depth, light and subject change. But the order never changes. It is that consistency of method that lets you edit a photo in 3 minutes instead of 30, and produce a coherent result from one image to the next.

The underlying philosophy is always the same: editing reveals what the water took, it does not add what was never there. The water takes, you give back. No more, no less.

AquaExposure does not receive any affiliate commission on the software mentioned in this article. All recommendations are based solely on field experience.