I was amazed when all the little backscatter dots that ruined my image disappeared with a single click. Backscatter Xterminator is an excellent gift for underwater photographers.
RC Astro and Go Ask Erin are thrilled to unveil Backscatter Xterminator (BSXT), a game-changing Photoshop plugin that eliminates backscatter from underwater photos with a single miraculous click.
A breakthrough for underwater photographers
Backscatter, the colloquial term for particulate matter suspended in water, has long been the bane of underwater photographers. Although many editing techniques exist to get rid of goo in underwater photos, nothing comes within light years of BSXT’s superpowers.
Have look at this video of an excellent, informative and entertaining presentation on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in underwater photography, namely Generative Fill in Photoshop, by regular contributor and avid underwater photographer and technical diver Michael Rothschild.
It should not happen but sometimes it does anyway: those annoying little white dots in our underwater images, which detract from the overall impression of the photograph. Known as backscatter, these dots appear when small particles in the water reflect the light from a strobe. The more directly the strobe light hits a subject, the higher the risk of backscatter. That is why a strobe should not be pointed straight at a subject.
Razer, a manufacturer well-known in the video gaming scene, has announced its newest line of laptops, with specs that make them very suitable for postproduction/editing of large files of underwater videos and photos.
A monitor for photographers and designers
In this series of articles on postproduction of underwater images, we have worked a lot on white balance settings, basic and advanced exposure corrections, contrast and curves, advanced techniques of removing colour casts, basic and advanced retouching, final colour boost, cropping and sharpening. Finally, our image is ready! And now, we arrive at the question: What do I do with it?
The sharpness of a photograph depends on the camera in use, the lens and the camera settings. Every lens has an optimal range with respect to its sharpness performance.
Adobe Photoshop is the number one tool for image editing and provides a large number of editing tools and options—far too many of them actually. But the good news here is that, for editing our underwater images, we only need a few.
The Intuos Pro Creative Pen Tablet from Wacom is a graphical tablet that can make a noticeable difference in the postproduction workflow of underwater images.
