Why white balance alone fails underwater
White balance applies broad channel gains to the frame. It works for a fairly even cast, but underwater restoration can model a fuller relationship between the recorded colour channels and address haze separately.
The foreground sand, diver, yellow fins and distant wreck expose the limit of applying one temperature and tint correction to the whole frame.
Try white balance on the wreck
The GoPro wreck frame has pale sand close to the lens, a diver and yellow fins in the middle, then coral-crusted structure fading into blue haze. Pick the sand with a white-balance eyedropper and the foreground may look cleaner. Keep warming the image for the wreck, however, and the sand yellows while the fins and skin become too warm.
Nothing is wrong with the control. White balance is designed to compensate for an illuminant across a frame; underwater scenes also combine wavelength-dependent attenuation, changing camera-to-subject distance and scattered light.[1][4]
What temperature and tint actually do
White balance changes the relative strength of colour channels. Temperature broadly shifts blue and amber; tint shifts green and magenta. In a RAW converter those choices begin with sensor data and usually offer more latitude than they do in a rendered JPEG.[2]
Use it by itself for a close, evenly lit ambient subject when the cast changes little through the composition. It is also useful when matching a known strobe or video light. A modest adjustment can clean up skin, sand or grey equipment without rebuilding the entire colour relationship.
Restoration uses the channels differently
Five Meters derives a full cross-channel transform from its restored rendering. Rather than scaling red, green and blue independently, an output channel can draw on all three recorded inputs plus an offset. That gives it more freedom to separate colours that a two-axis white-balance adjustment leaves compressed—and it applies that transform to the original full-resolution pixels, so you keep the camera’s fine structure.
Haze is handled as its own job. Image-restoration research treats attenuation and scattering as distinct challenges.[3] Dehaze responds to a spatial transmission estimate, while Water controls use a feathered matte for likely water regions, so colour and veil can be refined without forcing one temperature across the whole frame.
Use the methods in the right order
Run Restoration first when the photograph has a strong blue or green cast, weak colour separation or obvious haze. Then inspect black gear, pale sand, bubbles, skin and any known equipment colour.
Use Temperature and Tint afterwards for a small overall preference: warmer skin, a less green frame or cooler open water. If an adjustment must be large and opposing, reduce Restoration and reassess rather than stacking strong corrections.
Mixed strobe and ambient light is usually manageable in the same order: restore the cast, then refine the lit foreground with Temperature, Tint, Exposure and Highlights while leaving cooler ambient water believable.
Protect what the camera recorded
Restoration recovers colour and visibility from the channels the sensor captured. Clipped highlights, motion blur and detail already erased by scattering stay capture limits—the distant hull in the wreck example remains softer than the diver because that information never reached the camera cleanly. Five Meters makes the useful photograph clearer without inventing texture that was never there.