Taking Underwater Photographs Of A Coral Reef,

often look pretty dire when viewed later,

 you can edit the tones artificially in Photoshop, but the way colors come through underwater is not uniform (which is why the aforementioned Photoshop doctoring isn’t accurate), rather, the distance from the lens and the reflectivity of the captured object determines how its colors appear,

 but all is not lost, 

 two researchers at the University of Haifa have developed Sea-Thru, an algorithmic method for color-correcting underwater images,

 the tool allows scientists—and laypeople—to understand and contextualize the “true” colors of aquatic phenomena like fish, coral, and anemones,

 Sea-Thru was developed by Derya Akkaynak and Tali Treibitz in the paper’s abstract, the duo explain that the way sand appears is differently modulated by the water than, say the scales on a fish passing above the sand,

 Sea-Thru uses an algorithm to accurately and efficiently adjust images taken underwater,

and the results look pretty spectacular,

you can see the algorithm in action in the video above from Scientific American, and read Akkaynak and Treibitz’s full paper here, I wonder how the program will be offered to aquatic photographers?