Removing backscatter
within seconds!
If you ask any underwater photographer about their biggest frustration, ‘backscatter’ is probably one of the most frequently mentioned answers. The solution is BackscatterXTerminator!
But what exactly is backscatter? Backscatter consists of tiny particles in the water such as sand, plankton and other organic matter. These particles reflect the light from your flash and appear as distracting white dots or haze in your photo. It can be created by turbulent water, your own movements, or simply the natural presence of suspended particles in the water. Especially on dark backgrounds they are often clearly visible.
How do you prevent backscatter?
This is where your knowledge of your flash comes into play. The better the position of your flash, the less floating particles you will see in your photo. Position your flashes so that they direct light onto your subject from an angle rather than straight ahead. This reduces the chance of light reflecting off the floating particles.
But even with the best techniques, backscatter cannot always be completely avoided.
When you cannot prevent it, you will have to get to work in post-processing. In the past, this was a time-consuming job. Clicking on every speck of dust in Lightroom or photoshop. With the advent of AI techniques in editing programmes, this already became somewhat less time-consuming, but it was still a mind-numbing and time-consuming chore.
This is where BackscatterXTerminator (BSXT) comes in: a Photoshop plugin that makes removing backscatter easy.
If you grab the little line in the middle of this image with your mouse or finger and slide it back and forth, you can see the picture how it was with backscatter and how the backscatter disappeared after using the BackscatterXTerminator plugin.
Seconds of work!
It is not flawless with every photo. Sometimes there are still some particles in the photo that you have to remove manually. Or sometimes the plugin removed some parts that it mistook for backscatter, but were part of the photo.
Both are easily solved by ‘brushing’ the details back onto the separate layer in photoshop.
What is BackscatterXTerminator?
BackscatterXTerminator (BSXT) is a groundbreaking Photoshop filter developed by Erin Quigley of Go Ask Erin and RC Astro, a company specialising in astrophotography software. This unique collaboration brings techniques from astrophotography-such as removing stars from night shots-to the underwater world. The result? A tool that removes backscatter in your photos with unprecedented precision, without hours of manual editing.
BSXT uses advanced technology to isolate and remove interfering particles. The filter works with a single click and is designed to preserve the original detail of your image as much as possible. This means less time at the computer and more time to enjoy your photos and even better: go diving!
My First Experiences with the BSXT plugin
When I saw the first images of this plugin, I was impressed, but also sceptical. For had I thought: this was just good marketing. Surely the plugin won't be that good?
But after trying two or three photos of my own, I was won over. The programme is really good. Not all photos can be saved. If the backscatter is really too bad and therefore the background is too blotchy, it won't be fixed. But as you can see in the examples on this page: impressive!
The details of the subject are barely affected, if at all. And if dots from the subject might still be falsely mistaken as backscatter, as in the first photo on this page, it is easily polished back by means of a layer in photoshop.
Just as you can remove any spot that has just not been removed with a single click.
Photoshop and its installation
In addition, I want to stress how easy it is to install. If you are new to Photoshop, it might seem a bit intimidating, but with a good tutorial included, you will have it up and running in no time. All you have to do after installing the BackscatterXTerminator plugin is click the plugin's start button and the programme will work by itself.
A little knowledge of layers in photoshop would be helpful. But even if you wouldn't have that, it's easy to learn. Normally it would take hours to solve this manually. But with BSXT? Just one click and a few minutes later, the image was completely cleaned up.
The example below is a crop of the photo above. You can see so clearly that the plugin does its job really well.
What is the best way to apply the plugin?
I like doing all the standard editing in Lightroom. Like exposure and colour. Any local adjustments.
I then export my image to Photoshop from Lightroom. Lightroom creates a copy for this, which is later saved from photoshop. This keeps the original photo next to the edited one in your Lightroom catalogue.
Once in photoshop, you start the plugin and let BSXT do its work. How long that takes depends on the amount of detail in the photo, but in my photos it went pretty quickly, under a minute.
The result is immediately visible and can be further refined with a layer mask if needed. In my examples, the photos came directly from the plugin, I did not refine them further. There is still a spot of floating dirt here and there, and in the case of the anemone, a few details of the dots of the anemone have disappeared. I could easily ‘paint’ those back with the brush on the layer mask.
If you purchased the BackscatterXTerminator plugin, it comes with a very clear, step-by-step tutorial. I had been using photoshop for much longer and thus had prior knowledge, but I truly believe that if you don't know photoshop well yet it is not difficult to install and use this plugin.
Licence and Installation
BSXT is available via the website of Go Ask Erin. The introductory price is $179.95, for which you get a perpetual licence that can be activated on two computers. The installation process is simple: download the software, install the plugin and start editing immediately.
System requirements:
- Photoshop CC (abonnement adobe)
- MacOS 12 of later, of Windows 10 of later
- CPU: Support for AVX instructions
- Optional: GPU acceleration with an NVIDIA card (at least 6GB VRAM)
Who is BackscatterXTerminator suitable for?
Whether you are a professional photographer or a hobbyist, BSXT offers huge time savings and an efficient workflow. It is a must-have tool for anyone who wants to take their underwater photos to the next level.
The only drawback is that it works on photoshop. So you need a subscription with adobe. I have the photography subscription, which includes Lightroom and Photoshop.
Conclusion
BackscatterXTerminator is more than just another Photoshop plugin-it's a gamechanger for underwater photographers. It's going to save me a lot of time in post-processing! Taking technologies from astrophotography, BSXT offers a simple, effective and time-saving solution to one of the most intractable problems in underwater photography. No more endless, mind-numbing clicking on white spots!
With a single click, you can rid your photos of backscatter!
