Question why are some corals so bright?

[vin]

So how is it that people like Cornbread on eBay have the super bright corals
his corals are unfreakin believable. I know there are lots of others out there with some brightly lit corals, are they dipped in a solution first, microwaved, fed a die. Or do they come out of the ocean that way. Very curios please lmk

[Protoavis]

Largely out of the ocean and different conditions from the natural environment (ie lightning) can cause some improvement over than natural state.

[MiddletoM]

Bright in person or just in pictures? if its the latter then potentially photoshop.

[PIPSTER]

395nm light.

[reefgeezer]

Some coral contain florescent pigments. When exposed to a certain spectrum of light they glow in an entirely different spectrum. That's why a roughly 400nm blue light makes some corals glow bright green, florescent blue, or orange. Hobbyists have recognized this and optimized their lights to enhance the glow. And yes, sellers know this too. Actinic lights and royal blue LEDs do a great job of making stuff glow.

[vin]

I've seen these online so not in person, but I was told years ago at a lfs that people will microwave them I thought that was the craziest this i've here'd. But this person called Cornbread has some insane looking corals and are very expensive too, well for me they are.

[JohnnyHildo]

in my brief history of reefing i've never seen a zoanthid nearly as bright as the ones on ebay.... interesting lol. if it seems to good to be true it probably is which is why i'll never buy my corals there.

[vin]

Same here

[jrp1588]

in my brief history of reefing i've never seen a zoanthid nearly as bright as the ones on ebay.... interesting lol. if it seems to good to be true it probably is which is why i'll never buy my corals there.

I just bought a 20 pack of SPS on ebay for $250. The seller made no outlandish claims, and was very professional and courteous. All frags came in healthy. I don't know or care if any of the stuff was rare, but I'm satisfied. Plenty of no-nonsense sellers on ebay.

[saf1]

Ever go scuba diving? What you see in our water box at home does not match what you see in real life at depth underwater...just saying.

[Protoavis]

Ever go scuba diving? What you see in our water box at home does not match what you see in real life at depth underwater...just saying.

Largely true, but not always true. On average a lot of corals are fairly dull (compared to what people put in their reef aquariums these days) but not all of them are, there are flukes in the wild that are far brighter or more colourful than others and those are often what ends up being propagated as fast as they can be and spread among the hobby.

Just an example from
http://masa.asn.au/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=262348
Just scroll through the pics, lots of bland browns and then randomly a far brighter green one.

If you were collecting to propagate/sell to the hobby what are you going to pick out? the brighter green one because it'll have a higher value.

Granted with different lighting and whatever else in our tanks (compared with nature) that affect the coral in various ways but largely with these extreme colour morphs they already existed out in the wild (slightly duller but far brighter than the rest around them) they just aren't common in the wild.

[PIPSTER]

Ever go scuba diving? What you see in our water box at home does not match what you see in real life at depth underwater...just saying.

You need to dive deeper in areas with nice deepwater coral.

[sde1500]

in my brief history of reefing i've never seen a zoanthid nearly as bright as the ones on ebay.... interesting lol. if it seems to good to be true it probably is which is why i'll never buy my corals there.

I have some that glow bright orange, others that glow bright red and green. All when put under blue lights only.

Some pictures surely are over saturated online absolutely. But something I never seem to understand, every comment here about cornbred always comes back with "photoshop" yet he has a very high rating. He is too pricey really for me to consider buying much from him right now, but I'd be tempted to give one a whirl just to see the result.

[dkeller_nc]

What you are seeing in that particular lister's advertisements on Fleabay isn't real. As others have noted, it's certainly possible to get corals to "glow" in real life by the use of light in the 420nm - 480nm range. In the hobby, we tend to label this "actinic" or "blue/royal blue" or even "ultraviolet", though no light above 400nm is technically ultraviolet.

I'm nearly 100% sure that this is not what's going on in Cornbred's listings. I'm a very long-time photographer and digital photo editor, typically using Photoshop. There are several ways to accomplish what you're seeing and it's typically called "over saturation" in the photography hobby.

The simplest way to do this is with a specific photo adjustment algorithm in Photoshop and other digital photography software applications called (you guessed it) "saturation". But there are other ways as well, including manipulation of color-response curves. It can even be done "analog style" by using 450nm illumination and certain color gel filters over the camera lens. Doing this allows someone to claim that there's no "photoshopping" of there photos, but they still don't reflect the true appearance of the coral under normal reef tank lighting.

There's a humorous example of this in this (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2571512) thread. There's also a discussion of over-marketing, photo manipulation and "chop shops" in this (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2556733) thread.

Bottom line, it's best not to buy corals off of fleabay, especially if you're a newb. The best place is a local fish shop if you have a good one. Such purchases are truly WYSIWYG since you see them in person. Failing that, there are plenty of reputable vendors on-line that don't misrepresent their wares. Just a few are Pacific East Aquaculture, Austin AquaFarms, Diver's Den and Live Aquaria and Battle Corals. Pricier and more "trendy" is Unique Corals and World Wide Corals, but still reputable sellers.

[saf1]

You need to dive deeper in areas with nice deepwater coral.

Maybe, but I doubt it would change my opinion. I mostly dive cold water, Monterey Ca. Deepest around some of the panicles for me has been 90 to 114 feet give or take a few. Some of the best diving in the world based on other places I've been. Warmer waters about the same depths but you know how that goes. First dive is usually deep, rest vary. Or you are doing drifts, shore, etc.

In either case yes, you see a bit of color. But not a box of skittles. There is a reason people lug their lights down while photographing...

[btb72]

Scuba diving at depth the water filters out all the colors. That's why we only se blue down there. If you take a picture with bright lights you will see a ton of other colors.

[PIPSTER]

Scuba diving at depth the water filters out all the colors. That's why we only see blue down there. If you take a picture with bright lights you will see a ton of other colors.

That's partly my point. If you are specifically looking for fluorescence, as long as the type of coral are down there, you'll see it because it's not being blocked by all the rest of the "white" light. So, not reflecting colors, but fluorescent.

Albeit, it won't be as intense as bringing down a few hundred watts of 440nm light.
But those fluorescing colors, such as in torch coral, some hammers, and most zoas will be there. :uhoh3:

[Bpb]

The pictures you see online are usually taken under heavy blue LEDs, with a nice camera and macro lens, and either gel filters to remove the blue cast the LEDs create or its removed in post processing. I'm sure they look pretty good in person, but you can do some easy trickery with a camera to make things look unreal


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[Dkuhlmann]

Bright in person or just in pictures? if its the latter then potentially photoshop.

Actually Lightroom is the program of choice for editing coral pictures. I'm just starting on my photography journey and been spending a lot of money lately getting a new (to me) camera and lots of attachments as well as Lightroom. Now to take some lessons as to how to use all of this stuff :D

[jrp1588]

Actually Lightroom is the program of choice for editing coral pictures. I'm just starting on my photography journey and been spending a lot of money lately getting a new (to me) camera and lots of attachments as well as Lightroom. Now to take some lessons as to how to use all of this stuff :D

I'm a graphic designer, and I keep hearing about light room, but haven't gotten around to trying it. What makes it better than Photoshop?

[Dkuhlmann]

LOL I'm the wrong person to ask that question. You should ask it in the Photography forum here. But I believe that the biggest reason is that they are now taking the pictures of corals in RAW format instead of JPEG and RAW provides for better color manipulation. Still not sure as I have never worked with either program, but I did download Lightroom and will be getting taught how to use it in the next few weeks.

[jrp1588]

LOL I'm the wrong person to ask that question. You should ask it in the Photography forum here. But I believe that the biggest reason is that they are now taking the pictures of corals in RAW format instead of JPEG and RAW provides for better color manipulation. Still not sure as I have never worked with either program, but I did download Lightroom and will be getting taught how to use it in the next few weeks.

I'll look into it. Photoshop takes raw format as well. Doesn't matter since I don't have a camera that saves in raw.

[Dkuhlmann]

I know nothing about RAW format but the Canon EOS Rebel XTi 400D I just got does have the ability to save in RAW. I've not played with it yet but will be in the next few weeks.

Lightroom is from the same people that produce Photoshop.

[ricks49reef]

Why not call one of the Kardashians,they know all the secrets to making things look better than they are.

[mpderksen]

I know nothing about RAW format but the Canon EOS Rebel XTi 400D I just got does have the ability to save in RAW. I've not played with it yet but will be in the next few weeks.



Lightroom is from the same people that produce Photoshop.



Lightroom has a great photo organizer and few features than full Photoshop (layers?). I think it replaced Elements, but could be wrong. I have both (Creative Cloud subscription) and rarely need the power of full photoshop. My nephew can use PS to do amazing stuff, but the learning curve is too steep for me.

[dkeller_nc]

I'm a graphic designer, and I keep hearing about light room, but haven't gotten around to trying it. What makes it better than Photoshop?

If you're a photoshop user, there's no reason to mess with Lightroom. Lightroom has all of the same tools as in Photoshop, except they're "packaged" with an eye to post-processing of photos.

As a long-time PS user, I can certainly see why PS is intimidating to unintiated - very little of what you can do is obvious from the user interface.

[Timfish]

One thing to keep in mind is we are selecting corals that are more colorful, some varieties have multiple copies of genes that let them make more fluorescing protein than others

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13041/pdf

There's still many questions but fluorescent proteins have at least four roles. A coral may use flourescing proteins on top of the zooxanthellae for photo protection or beside/underneath the zooxanthellae for photo enhancment. The fluorescing proteins may be used as part the corals immune system. They may also be used to deal with free radicals in the corals cells. (When fluorescing proteins are used for photo enhancement by reducing nutrients and reducing zooxanthellae a coral may appear brighter.)

http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/4244/
http://www.reef.edu.au/OHG/HG%20papers/Salih,%20Hoegh-Guldberg%20and%20Cox%20et%20al%201997%20-%20fluoro.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764454/
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25470724?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

When fluorescing proteins are being used for photo enhancement reducing the zooxantheallae will make the make the coral brighter. But the coral is not increasing it's fluorescing proteins. In this study looking at heat and cold stress shows that even though a coral can look brighter and have a measurable increase in brightness it can have in fact a reduction of fluorescing proteins.

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep01421

[jraker]

It is explained well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYEnzkprH1E

Usually only very colorful videos are collected, and blue light also helps.

[theatrus]

If you're a photoshop user, there's no reason to mess with Lightroom. Lightroom has all of the same tools as in Photoshop, except they're "packaged" with an eye to post-processing of photos.



As a long-time PS user, I can certainly see why PS is intimidating to unintiated - very little of what you can do is obvious from the user interface.



There are a few key differences in Lightroom's image flow. Specifically, the entire image is always processed as a float32 per pixel, which avoids all risk of posterization or railing. Also, all manipulation starts from the mosaiced image sensor source up, so nothing is set in stone. It's Adobe Camera Raw, without ever baking any of the ACR settings as you would in PS. (Photoshop can also run in 32bpp, but users rarely do, and some tools become limited in this depth).

[dkeller_nc]

To be honest, I've never encountered an issue with posterization from the limits of 8-bit RGB files. But on the other hand, I tend not to make much in the way of extreme color shifts and other manipulations. And while I get the difference between PS and LR with respect to the original image file, I also don't concern myself with it because it's my habit to always save the original camera RAW file in a catalog and only save copies that have been manipulated in PS.

That said, if someone asked me "which should I get" and they've currently have neither, I'd tell them to get LR because of its cataloging capabilities, lower price, and ease of use. In fact, if I understand correctly, you can still purchase LR as a "owned" application, whereas you can't with PS - it now requires a per-month subscription.

[jrp1588]

There are a few key differences in Lightroom's image flow. Specifically, the entire image is always processed as a float32 per pixel, which avoids all risk of posterization or railing. Also, all manipulation starts from the mosaiced image sensor source up, so nothing is set in stone. It's Adobe Camera Raw, without ever baking any of the ACR settings as you would in PS. (Photoshop can also run in 32bpp, but users rarely do, and some tools become limited in this depth).

Well that's way over my head. I'm much more of an InDesign and illustrator user.