Photography and Photoshopping

Learning how to take pictures is incredibly important when it comes to reef photography. I've never had much ambition to learn but the growth, color, and potential pictures keep on compounding as the days go by. Thanks to the reefcentral photography forum I was able to go from this:

To the image at the very top. I believe the differences are noticeable.

First, the fish is now in focus, this problem was fixed by taking the image perpendicular to the glass with the camera instead of at an angle.

Second, the coral is shown in its entirety.

Third, the colors were adjusted to match the real environment. To do this I used RAW format capturing instead of the jpeg format as above. The RAW format allows lighting adjustment so I did not need to try to white balance on sand because the bulbs are 12,000 kelvin rated. This means the lighting is a bit bluer than normal house lighting.

Forth, the polyps are clear. This was due to turning off the pumps in the tank during photography and a timer to remove hand movements.

Last, the polyp detail was enhanced by adjusting a few settings on the camera ISO - 200, F/10, and shutter speed of 1/60s. Photoshop added detail by lightly overlaying the image with a high pass grey image of itself.