some real colored lps.

[mummra100769]

here are some shots showing different color schemes on the same corals. all these were taken under the same lighting...the only difference is that white balance was used or it was ran through PS. check out howmuch of a change you can make with just a little cheating.

here is one of my favorite an alien eye favittes. the first shot is what it most looks like.




now actinic only with white balance control.




now ran through PS to enhance the color.




ohhh man if only it looked like the last two pics. instant tyree LE.lol

i wonder how many of us would bid on those last pics? really just be carefull out there guys and maybe ask to see some flash shots with super pricey corals.

i do like the fact that i saw on a recent ebay auction that the person takes all shots under flash and warns about bidding on anything that does not have a full flash shot. good job that is what we need more of...balance. it's fine to show off a pic of a coral under 20k and cleaned up in PS, just show a flash shot as well.

[pondfrog]

mummra,

Nice job, great demonstration.

Despite some of the naysayers, I have always been a fan of your pointing out the photos that just aren't quite right........

Keep up the soapbox!!

[mummra100769]

thanx mang. on the above subject there is a micromussa/favia (btw it's a favia) on ebay right now that suffers from a case of actinic-idis. i would bet it is more brown than purple.

he did not even use his own pics but someone elses.

[Stephany]

Thanks for the thread.
I get really annoyed when people are like "look at my tank" and only post actinic shots. Drives me nuts.

Now I really can appreciate when people say "Full tank actinic shots", I'll know not to even bother looking.

I'm picky I guess. Some people tweak out about the mag-float sightings in pics, I tweak out about actinic only shots.

[Reefrookie2006]

Nice Favia collection.

[Zoalander]

Are the last 2 for sale? LOL. Thats why you have to think twice before buying anything online.

[mummra100769]

Originally posted by Reefrookie2006
Nice Favia collection.

thanx man but those are all the same coral.

[REEF-DADDY]

Originally posted by mummra100769
thanx man but those are all the same coral.

I guess that proves how easy it is!

[sfsuphysics]

Nice Mummra, I know how easy it is to "cheat" also using PS it's easy to come back to the original color (in the case over overly blue/purple pieces which look too washed out). When I take pictures, especially if I'm trading or selling, I will always have some PVC or some egg crate in the picture for a visual white balance for the user who's doing the judging, I know you probably can work around it, but it still is a little extra bit to go through to show off your coloration.

[mummra100769]

yeah i agree PS is like the force, you can use it for good or evil. i use PS all the time but only to show what the coral really looks like. matter of fact i use PS to dull down the colors a little bit.

[GMGQ]

I agree, sometimes a P&S digicam just doesnt capture the colour in person, so I use PS to touch it up. Usually it's just a matter of clicking Auto Levels for a quick fix. Or else sharpening a picture that's a bit blury.

Originally posted by mummra100769
yeah i agree PS is like the force, you can use it for good or evil. i use PS all the time but only to show what the coral really looks like. matter of fact i use PS to dull down the colors a little bit.

[shaggydoo541]

Great post. A lot of great pictures I have seen do not look real to me. Sure the picture is vibrant and looks great, but if you are looking to purchase a coral this can be highly misleading. I personally do not buy anything unless I have seen it in person, therefore I do not do online shopping for livestock. Seeing the variation in your pictures reinforces my idea to only buy locally. Who knows what you are getting online, even with pictures.

[yardboy]

Thanks mummra. The drag for me is while I like the look of my tank under actinics, I've never been able to capture it the way my eye sees it, and for me that's the best shot, the one that looks just like what I see. I've also been very lucky I guess, I buy my best stuff online and have never been ripped off, matter of fact I feel that I've been the beneficiary of a poor shot. I got these blues for a lot less than others paid, because in the original selling shot they looked dull and almost brown Shot taken under XM15000K with PS elements autolevel adjustment, and to me it looks just like what I see in the tank.

[marillion]

I'm selling this rare lordhowensis morph...any takers?



Peace,

Chip

[pondfrog]

Yardboy,
I think the problem for many of us with your photo and trying to figure out what they look like is that the substrate in your photo is blue!! Noone will take issue with you saying you like your tank to look that way, that is simply a preference issue.

BUT, since the way I run my tank, my sand looks white when I look at it , I would wonder if your blue zoas would look blue in MY tank. Obviously only relevant IF I were buying some of those from you based on your photo.

Those are nice, BTW!

[yardboy]

pondfrog, first I thank you for being so gracious when I looked so stupid. My eye didn't see the sand in my photo as blue until you pointed it out. I went back and looked at the original shot and it was even more blue, due I guess to the 15000K bulb and poor white balance on my camera. And just like you, when I see a shot with a white background (usually sand or eggcrate) tinted the color of the coral, I balk and don't even consider buying it.
It's complicated though. I've used 6500K bulbs in my tanks and didn't like them a bit, though the corals did, and didn't consider their colors "real" under that light. And when I looked at the color temperatures of flashes, they're normally even lower than 6500K, so does a flash picture give an accurate rendition either?
I just got a new underwater flash for my camera and it's color temp. is only 4300! Due to the absorption of water at the lower wavelengths? I'm not sure. It'll certainly give me new eyes to look at corals next time I go diving!
Here's a shot of a purple porites, shot taken in 5 feet of water off St. thomas without flash and photo not adjusted, except for cropping to reduce size of file. It'as as my mind remembers it, but is dependent ont he color rendition of the camera.

[pondfrog]

Yardboy,
I think you hit it on the head- it is really complicated!!
It is soooo hard to get a "real" photo of many of the corals we keep under different lighting and then you have to really know your camera!!

I think mummra started the thread because there are soooo many ebay and otherwise posts that have been discussed ad nauseum on this forum about what are obviously grossly incorrect photos of corals, wether PSd or just poorly taken.
At the end of the day I guess we all have to simply set up with online vendors we trust or just adhere to buyer beware principles.


Really nice porites as well, btw...........you don't happen to have the exact GPS coordinates of that piece do you.............

[yardboy]

Originally posted by pondfrog

Really nice porites as well, btw...........you don't happen to have the exact GPS coordinates of that piece do you.............

As a matter of fact,..........No. But I'll bet if you take the Western Caribbean Carnival Cruise and sign up for the U.S. Virgin Islands St. Thomas snorkeling excursion to Turtle Bay I'll bet they'll put you right on top of it! If you need further directions, ask this guy!

I was so enamored of it that when got back to the States I asked an lfs about it and he said that typically they turn brown in our tanks. Claimed that there just wasn't enough light for them. Later I saw a frag from Seacrop in California advertised as blue, but it was brown when I got it, and brown it is today, though it grows well, and is within 2" of the surface directly under 250W 10000K's. Maybe it's the color temp. of the bulbs!

[mummra100769]

really my goal was to inform as many people as i can that this hobby seems as of late to be loaded with profit mongers. there is a guy on another forum that sells his stuff and posts pics and the pics are purple. not a little purple but a lot purple. he is praised all the time for his super colored stuff when it's more than likely just run of the mill. i mean really really purple.

this is another good example of how easy it is to take advantage of some one.



all i did to the pic is resize it. this was just a simple act of shading the halides slightly and look at the difference.

[yardboy]

Mummra, I agree with you on the profit mongers, though it "takes two to tango" and there seems to be an equal rash of people willing to pay ridiculous prices for stuff that looks and is labelled as "rare and unusual" even though you think they'd know (thanks to people like you) that any pic can be photoshopped, and the sellers are "protected" by the complexities of bulb color temperatures and water quality ("Hey, it looked just like the pic in my tank. Maybe you've got water quality problems that made it look brown in your tank".)

[jaze36]

Thanks for the great examples. A lot of times I go through ebay and the like and see things like that and say to myself "wow lok at that, I've never seen anything like that before, why don't my local stores have stuff like that." Now I know why, thanks for the lesson in photoshop.

[organism]

Originally posted by jaze36
Thanks for the great examples. A lot of times I go through ebay and the like and see things like that and say to myself "wow lok at that, I've never seen anything like that before, why don't my local stores have stuff like that." Now I know why, thanks for the lesson in photoshop.

I completely disagree, I think that the only thing that threads like this do is make people paranoid that every nice coral and its pictures are all of a sudden photoshopped, when only a small minority of them are. Most of the corals that look that nice really are that nice, and the purpose of these witch hunt threads seems extremely questionable when viewed in that light. All of the corals in the first post in this thread could easily exist, it just takes an unscrupulous person to photoshop them into something that they aren't, but to all of a sudden claim that all of the corals that look like that are photoshopped is not only misleading, but very questionably moral. The easiest solution, ask the vendor, check their feedback, and make your own informed decision

[jaze36]

I would say it helps people to make sure they research what they buy and be aware that these types of things are possible. It is only a witch hunt if you are a person being hunted. Are you? I do not use any graphics programs and I'm very unaware of their capabilities, so it is very helpful to know that things like that can be done. As for unscruplous people the world is full of them. It is always buyer beware, it helps to know what you have to beware of.

[mummra100769]

on ebay right now i can come up with 4-6 really questionable sales going on. these threads are designed to change the standards that corals are sold by. hopefully one day all corals sold will include a flash shot along with the "pretty" shot. it is all about being fair to the buyer and disclosing all possible information related to the sale.

no witch hunts here and little is said about photchopping corals...it is more broad than that. it's about asking for a flash shot or a 10k shot and getting a real idea of what this coral will look like under many different lighting schemes. me myself i like 20k lighting on my tanks but when i take pics i seem to be able to filter out all that blue that blows the colors of corals through the roof....i only want to raise awareness not hunt anybody down. in the end we will all be better for it.

look at it this way if it looks just as good under flash or white lighting then you really have something sweet...right?

[organism]

Originally posted by jaze36
It is only a witch hunt if you are a person being hunted. Are you?

oh, certainly not, but a witch hunt is actually a situation in which even the most innocent can be perceived as being intensely guilty, it has nothing to do with who is being hunted, it is only a witch hunt if you don't know 100% that you are right, and there's an immense planet of difference between thinking and feeling you are right, and knowing 100% that this or that vendor is using photoshopped images. witch hunt, to me, implies that the situation has become "what? a nice picture? get him!"

Originally posted by mummra100769
on ebay right now i can come up with 4-6 really questionable sales going on. these threads are designed to change the standards that corals are sold by.

no, it's certainly not why these "threads" of yours are designed, these threads are designed to claim that you know more than the people selling this or that particular coral. Questionable, what is questionable? It means that, in your opinion, the pictures don't portray what they are selling, but they could just as easily be portraying exactly that, while it's completely your right to say that this auction or that auction has a picture that is questionable, why not be truthful, and say that, in your opinion, that coral might be different than what is pictured, but, in reality, you could be completely and utterly wrong in making that statement? I don't see that stated here, only one long thread which should be called "I know better than you do, so take my opinions as fact"