photoshop Archives - Infrared Conversions, IR Modifications & Photography Tutorials

5 Tips When Using Photoshop’s Sky Replacement

Photoshop’s sky replacement function has been a welcome addition to an already astonishing software. It gives photographers the opportunity to replace a sky in a photo effortlessly without the need to learn how to mask or use layers. And because Photoshop works so well with Lightroom, it means moving images back and forth between the two is quick and straightforward. But whilst the sky replacement function can be useful, if not used correctly it can actually ruin a photo. So here are 5 tips for when you are replacing skies in Photoshop.

Firstly, is it cheating?

The short answer is NO! There are of course purists who believe that photos shouldn’t be manipulated. But the way I see this process is that it really depends on what the purpose of the image is. For example, if you are a photojournalist, then the photos should be free of post-processing. But if you are going to be printing your photo to put on a wall in your home then why not change the sky? In the same way that a painter would change colours to produce their vision, you are doing the same thing, just digitally. So, don’t worry about post-processing and image manipulation being cheating, because it is not.

Find the right match

The biggest challenge in using sky replacement is being able to find the right sky to match your scene. Because if there isn’t a natural match, the photo will just not work. So, before deciding to replace the sky in a photo, you need to ensure you have the correct sky. Whether you purchase a pack or you take your own photos of skies, the important thing is to go through and look for a sky that has similar tones but also is what you would expect in those conditions. For example, if you have a bright but flat light, a dramatic sunset sky just wouldn’t match the tones in the scene. See the two images below and how even blue skies can differ and how the second sky works better (although still not perfect – we’ll come onto that next).

Tweak the sky

As you can see in the image above, even the blue sky still doesn’t quite feel natural. The photo has more brightness and tones of yellow in the scene which are not currently present in the sky. So the next step should be to tweak the colour of the sky for a better match of your original photo. Using the “Temperature” and “Brightness” sliders, tweak the sky until you have a more natural match between the foreground and sky.

In the image below I have brightened the sky and added more yellow to it to match the scene better. At this point, you may also want to move your sky around to get the perfect placement of the clouds for the composition.

Check edges

Before you save your sky you also need to take a look at the edges between your sky and where your image meets to ensure that there is a natural transition between the two. There are a couple of options on the sky replacement panel for tweaking this.

First is the “Shift Edge” slider. As the name implies, this moves the edge of the sky lower or higher depending on where the default – which is zero is. Pull the slider to the left and your sky move further up revealing more of your original sky. Move the slider to the right and it will move your sky lower covering the horizon line (see image below).

If around your horizon line is fairly clear, like for example there are no low clouds, you shouldn’t really need to change the value beyond zero. However, if you do have low clouds these will often show through the fade gradient of the sky to image transition. In these scenarios, you can move the edge of your sky up a little so that it clears these low clouds.

Fade edge

The next slider is the second part of checking your horizon line. The “Fade Edge” slider, does exactly as it implies. It fades more of the edge of the sky for a smoother blend into the horizon line. The default for this fade is the maximum which is 100 and the lowest is zero. This will usually mean a very sharp edge between sky and horizon which looks unnatural (see image below).

But you may also sometimes find that 100 is too much as you want less of a fade between the two (for example to cover some faint clouds). My suggestion would be to zoom into your image and then tweak the slider until you get the desired effect. Then click OK and you’ll notice your image adjustment layers appearing on the right. At this point, you can save your image or make further adjustments as required.

As I said earlier, the aim should be for a final image that looks natural and seamlessly blends those two elements of sky and foreground together.

Photoshop’s sky replacement is a great tool to use to manipulate your photos. Even if you are a complete beginner you will find the whole process incredibly quick, easy and enjoyable. But remember to use the tips above to make your finished photo look natural.

The Easy Way To Remove Chromatic Aberration In Photoshop

Chromatic aberration is an optical issue that occurs within lenses. This manifests itself in photos with colour fringing or purple fringing around the edges of objects, especially with high contrast areas. Most of the time the chromatic aberration can be removed with just a few simple clicks in Lightroom. However, in some more extreme cases, you may not be able to get the results you want. So you will need to use Adobe Photoshop to be able to remove the chromatic aberration completely from your photos. But fear not, the process is actually very simple. So here’s a step-by-step guide on how to remove chromatic aberration using Photoshop.

What is chromatic aberration?

To fully understand chromatic aberration and what causes it you need to understand optics and wavelengths of colour. To summarise, chromatic aberration is caused when wavelengths of colour are not brought together by the lens to the same focal plane. Or when wavelengths of colour are focused at different positions in the focal plane. As a result, you often end up with colours such as red, green, blue, yellow, purple, and magenta appearing around the edges of objects. This is especially apparent in high contrast situation where are you have very bright and very dark areas next to each other. If you want to really understand chromatic aberration there are plenty of resources out there that go into great detail about this issue. For most photographers, the only thing they need to know is how to remove it from their photos.

How to remove chromatic aberration?

There are lots of different ways to remove chromatic aberration in Photoshop. However, I have personally found that this is the simplest and quickest way to do it.

Step 1

Open your photo in Photoshop and duplicate the image. The reason for this is that it is much easier to revert to the original if you still have an untouched version. Keep in mind that unlike Lightroom any adjustment that you make on a photo is actually permanent. So ideally you should get into the habit of working on layers. Once you have duplicated your image add a layer mask. If your layer mask isn’t black simply click on it and inverse it.

Step 2

From now on you will be working on the duplicated layer of your image. So next you need to add some Gaussian Blur to your image. Yes, that’s right you read it correctly, we are going to add blur to your image. To do this select “Filter” on the top menu. Scroll down to “Blur”, and select “Gaussian Blur”.

Once you’ve clicked to add Gaussian Blur to the image you need to adjust the radius to between 9 and 12.

Step 3

Now you need to go back to your panel on the right-hand side and change the blending mode of your duplicated image. Select “Colour” from the drop-down menu.

Step 4

Now comes the fun part. Select your mask layer and then select the brush tool from the left-hand menu. Make sure that your brush size is fairly small. Now it’s just the case of simply brushing around the edges where chromatic aberration is evident. You should notice that the chromatic abrasion, in other words, the colours are disappearing. Once you have gone through your entire image removing any chromatic aberration double check your image at 100% size to ensure nothing is out of place. It’s as easy as that!

Step 5

One way to make your workflow even faster is to create an action of this process on Photoshop. Actions are very useful to help speed up the process of the same repetitive action. So, for example, you can create an action to add all the processes from above to an image apart from step number 4. So you will then simply brush the chromatic aberration away as specified in step 4.

How to create an action in Photoshop

Creating an action in Photoshop is easy. Simply click on “Window” on the top bar, scroll down to “Actions” and click. This will open the actions panel on your workspace. Click the record button to start recording any actions you take from that point onwards. Press the stop button when you have finished a particular sequence of actions. You now have an action to use on your photos. When you want to use the action, select it from the menu and press the “play” button. Creating actions for specific things can really help speed up your editing process.

Chromatic aberration can be a real pain to remove. But it is incredibly important that you do not forego removing it from images that are affected. This method can be used to removed chromatic aberration in the majority of photos quickly and easily.

The Case for Black and White Photography

Brace yourself because here it comes…it’s another discussion about black and white photography. Don’t worry, it’s not going to be the same old “which is better?” or even worse, another “how to convert your photos to black and white” type of articles. Admittedly, I have written on both of those subjects extensively before but this time will be a little different.

Today, we’re going to strip down the idea of black and white photography and attempt to locate how this tried and true area of photography has managed to maintain its status in an arguably over saturated(pun intended) world of photographic modernism.

Monochrome and the Film Difference

It’s not secret that the black and white side of photo work is deeply rooted in film. Still, even though it makes for a solid title for this section, the term “monochrome” has been somehow mismanaged to the point where it is widely considered synonymous with black and white. This is wrong. Monochrome means “one color” or essentially an image made of shades of only one color. This color could be anything from black, yellow, red or pink. Grayscale might actually be a more appropriate term for true black and white. Even then the lines become somewhat blurred because it’s incredibly difficult to completely abolish all color toning from a black and white film negative. Take a look at these images of a 4×5 black and white negative(complete with film borders)and I’ll show you what I mean.

The first photo is a color rendition of the negative. You’ll notice that is is toned quite blue based on the development. This is due to a few factors but the point is virtually all black and white photographs aren’t exactly black and white. Rather, they are toned based on the type of film emulsion and the development techniques used. Now, look at that same piece of film after I have digitally converted it to black and white in Lightroom.

See the difference? I say all of that to say this: modern digital photography often paints a one dimensional representation of black and white images. True black and white photographs aren’t usually black and white at all or not even monochromatic. Instead, they are a carefully mapped presentation of tonal ranges. Remember this the next time you click a button to make your photo black and white. Sure, it might remove the color but the work shouldn’t stop there.

Speaking of color…

Is Color Necessary?

Yes, color is needed. Is it always needed? Absolutely not. There are times when a photo is suited to black and white and times when it is not. Well, who decides? That question is also deceptively simple to answer. It’s you, you’re the one who decides. Does the color play a role in the emotion or feeling you mean to convey or does it get in the way? These are most certainly murky waters to wade.

Today, we don’t even have to approach color or black and white photography the same way as we did thirty or even twenty years ago. Take the very site you’re reading this article on right now. LifePixel specializes in infrared converted cameras that brings the world of color into a new realm of creative exchange. Infrared cameras see light differently than our own eyes. As a result, completely familiar colors become foreign and black and white pictures take on a completely new feel. When you think about color and how it relates to photography you must understand that even the things we see are wholly subjective to our own perception.

Some Closing Thoughts…

If you haven’t been able to tell by now the purpose of this article isn’t to promote the merits of one type of photo over another. There’s plenty of room even now for both color and black and white photography. In fact, a lot of it comes down to personal taste and how we perceive the world around us. At the same time, remember to look deeper into your work and find what gives it meaning to you. Does color play a part? Does it make more of a connection in black and white? Whatever direction you choose just make sure that the original intent of the photo shines through.

Smarter Sharpening with the High Pass Filter in Photoshop

What if I told you that sharpening as we know it in photography isn’t real? That might be a little hard to believe but the truth is that it is actually impossible to make an image physically sharper after it has already been made. Sharpening a photo is simply an illusion. We can make a photograph appear to be sharper. Our digital images can be made to look sharper by adjusting the contrast of the pixels around the edges of shapes within the photo and this is what we are going to talk about today. We will look at how you can easily make your photos more sharp quickly using the high pass filter in Photoshop.

What is the High Pass Filter?

The high pass filter is just a method of creating a sharpening effect to your photo based on the pixels surrounding the contrasted edges of the elements within the image. While Photoshop has some dedicated sharpening tools(unsharp mask, smart sharpening) the high pass filter is the method I tend to use the most because I love the total control it gives me over my sharpening.

Using the High Pass Filter

To get started with sharpening using the high pass filter it is highly recommended that you complete ALL of your edits prior to performing the sharpening. This means that if you’re like me and do most of your processing in Lightroom and then export to Photoshop for finishing you will leave your high pass sharpening for the very last step. When you’re ready to sharpen, open your image in Photoshop.

Next, duplicate the layer by using keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J(Cmd+J for Mac). This is the layer where the high pass filter will be applied. I’ve renamed it “High Pass Layer” so it’s easier to see.

Make sure the new high pass layer is selected and then click on the ‘Filter’ tab and then ‘Other’ and lastly select ‘High Pass’.

You’ll notice an abrupt change to your image. It will essentially go completely grey. Don’t panic because this is exactly what we want to happen. But we have a choice to make and that is what radius we set for the high pass filter.

The radius controls the amount of pixels which are targeted around the edges where the sharpening will be applied. There’s a lot of wiggle room here and it generally is based on the resolution of your camera. The higher megapixel your camera the higher you can set the radius without causing unsightly effects such as halos and glowing edges. Let me show you what I mean. Here is the high pass filter with a radius of ‘1’…

And now here it is with a radius of ‘36’.

The higher the radius the more of the image will be affected. This particular photo was made with a 36.4 megapixel camera and I find a radius of ‘4’ to be the proverbial sweet spot. Adjust your radius accordingly.

Click ‘OK’ to apply the high pass.

But wait, this still looks horrible and gray and not at all what we want.

The next step is key. We have to change the blend mode of our sharpening layer. There are multiple choices here but the ‘Overlay’ option tends to work best with virtually all images and is the blend mode I use. After the overlay blend mode is selected we have what is essentially our final sharpened image.

Have a look at the difference the high pass filter has made in terms of sharpness. Here is the unsharpened photo….

And now the freshly sharpened version….

Closing Thoughts on Sharpening with the High Pass Filter

Don’t forget, not only can the high pass filter be applied easily but like any other layer adjustment in Photoshop the opacity can be adjusted until you reach the exact level of desired sharpness. Furthermore, adding in a layer mask to the sharpening layer can allow you to take complete control over the sharpening effect and only apply it to the areas of the photo you choose.

The best bit of advice when it comes to sharpening an image using any method is that less is usually more. Always remember that an over sharpened image is often less appealing than one that is slightly soft. Enjoy using the high pass filter in Photoshop!

How to Add Instant Contrast in Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a beautiful thing. It allows an incredibly wide range of artists, designers, creatives, and especially us photographers to inject a little bit of creative juice into their work and see it come to life. And while Photoshop can be enormously complex there are so many simple, straightforward edits you can use to instantly transform your photographs.

One of these goes back to the basics of photo editing: exposure and contrast. There is a great way to quickly add contrast to your images by using PS blend modes, more specifically the “soft light” blend mode. You may be thinking “But why not just add contrast with the contrast adjustment?” Well, you can for sure…but it’s not exactly the same. And why not expand your photographic editing horizons to try something new?

Soft Light Blend Mode

The soft light blend mode is one of seven PS blends that make up the “contrast” group. These modes all use varying mathematical wizardry to accomplish a similar effect which is to make darks darker and lights lighter in relation to one another. While that is an incredible over-simplification it’s not entirely inaccurate.

The soft light blend mode bases itself on whether pixels are lighter or darker than 50% gray. If a pixel in your image is darker than 50% gray it will be darkened further. If a pixel is whiter than 50% gray it will be lightened. The result? More contrast. Not only that, but this contrast is wholly dependent on image and it’s tonal makeup.

Adding Contrast with Soft Light Blend Mode

First, duplicate your base photo layer by using the keyboard shortcut ‘Ctrl+J’(Cmd+J for Mac).

Next, select the soft light blend mode from the blend mode drop down list. Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut ‘Ctrl+F’ to do the same thing a little faster. You will instantly notice a fairly drastic change to your photo. Namely the increased amount of contrast.

To really control the amount of contrast I highly recommend adjusting your layer opacity until you reach the overall level of contrast for your particular image. In the case of soft light the opacity and fill accomplish the same outcome so it is your choice which to use.

The real fun begins when you decide to add a layer mask. Don’t worry! Masks aren’t something to be afraid of(in most cases) and they allow you to completely take charge of how an edit is applied in PS. You’re about to see how easy it is right now.

Adding a Layer Mask

To add a layer mask to your soft light blend layer simply click on the “add a mask” icon at the bottom of the layer panel.

Guess what? You’ve just added a layer mask! It’s that simple. Now, you’re free to paint in or out the soft light contrast to virtually any degree and location you choose. Just adjust the size and opacity of your brush to achieve the desired effect.

Add in some a quick increase in exposure and we’re left with the finished product. All done within a matter of minutes.

Some Final Thoughts….

One of the fun and interesting aspects of post processing is discovering all the different methods of achieving certain editing effects. Adding contrast to a photograph is one of the most basic edits a photographer can make to instantly add power to a photo. There are many ways to do this and you’ve just learned one. Try using the soft light blend mode technique to add contrast in a smarter, more controlled way. The soft light blend mode in PS makes it easy to quickly and effectively add punch to your images and it is something I use to some extent on virtually every photograph I process.

Making Fall Colors Pop with Adobe Lightroom

Here in the Northern hemisphere Autumn is in full swing. The colors of the leaves are changing and giving their last big show as we head into winter. The frosty mornings and golden hues offer outstanding opportunities for photographers to capture these beautiful Fall colors before they’re gone until next year.

In this article we’re going to talk about how you can make those bright Fall colors really pop in Adobe Lightroom! It doesn’t take much to make your images of the season standout. Let’s get started!

Bringing Out the Color

The main focus of majority of Autumnal photos is of course color. Bright Earth-tones and muted flavors of of brown and gray intermingle together to produce an incredible palate of gold. Here’s how to make all those beautiful tones come to the forefront in your image. We’ll begin with the Vibrance and Saturation sliders in the basic Development Panel of Lightroom.

Vibrance

The vibrance slider brings out the mid tone saturation of colors. It comes in handy when you want only the less saturated colors in the photo to be amplified. Look at this image before the vibrance was adjusted.

And now after

With +50 Vibrance

The key use of increasing the vibrancy of a photo is to maintain a natural and pleasing look to the colors that need to be intensified.

Saturation

Saturation and vibrance are closely related but at the same time affect different aspects of your image. Whereas vibrance boosts the colors which are less saturated, the saturation slider increases the color saturation of all the colors. This means that if a color is already well saturated it will become even more so when this slider is used. Here we have an image with color already well saturated.

If we boost the overall saturation, it leaves the image looking overly saturated with the color appearing fake and unnatural.

With +40 Saturation

The saturation is increased to the point of looking gaudy. So, be very careful when applying the saturation slider to the entire image.

The HSL Panel

If you want to get a little more advanced when edited your Fall photos then look no further than the HSL panel in Lightroom. It’s here where you can take full control of color.

The aptly named HSL panel adjusts the hue, saturation, and luminance of color. This is the master control station for color within your photo. Use this to not only affect the brightness and saturation of specific colors but also their hue. Here’s a photo before any HSL adjustments.

And now with the orange luminance and saturation increased…

The hue adjustments make colors appear more or less true to their original tone. For example, blue can appear more green or more purple; oranges more yellow or more red. Here we’ve changed the oranges to a lighter, more yellow hue.

While here, to a darker red hue.

Some Final Thoughts on Fall Photos…

Fall is a wonderful time of year for photography. If you’re seeking to make your images of Autumn to stand out from the crowd, try these simple tips that will help all those beautiful colors of the season shine through! Don’t be afraid to adjust the hues of the colors until they reflect how you felt about the scene. Likewise, don’t hesitate to actually DECREASE the saturation and vibrance of the colors in order to reach the final look that you want.

Manual Panorama Assembly

The weather is perfect, the lighting is just right and you’ve just finished shooting a 3 frame panorama of an interesting scene. You’re anxious to get home and assemble the images. So you grab a cup of coffee, load up your images and proceed with the panorama assembly. Then the reality hits you that you didn’t shoot the panorama in manual and the auto-assembled image looks unusable. What can be done to save this panorama? There are probably many programs out there that do a better job with assembling panoramas than Photoshop. But I use Photoshop and have saved many panoramas in the way I’m about to describe.

I made a similar mistake on a panorama of an interesting shot while in Norway. Could I re-shoot it? Maybe. But many compositions are once in a lifetime shots that can never be duplicated. I processed my images and was disappointed with the result. Below is the result of how Photoshop’s auto panorama routine handled my files of unequal exposure. I’ll show how to get a better result than this using a manual technique. Stemming from my astrophotography, I learned how to do manual panorama assemblies which can sometimes salvage shots that can’t be assembled properly by Photoshop.

Let’s get started. Fire up Photoshop and load up your pano images in separate layers. You can do this manually by opening up each image and doing a Select All and the Copy/Paste. But I like to use the script Load Files Into Stack.

When you’re done you should end up with something looking like this, with your pano images in separate layers (lower RHS).

The images then need to be aligned for the panorama. This too can be done manually but using the Auto-Align Layers is generally the easiest and fastest option. It generally does a very good job. Highlight all the layers in the Pano and click Edit then Auto-Align Layers. I usually just choose the Auto option and let the computer do its work. On my antique mobile workstation and with my 5DII images and Photoshop CS5, this takes a while. When it’s done, you’ll probably end up with something that looks worse than what Photoshop assembled. But be patient.

Having the image in layers like this gives us considerable flexibility to manually blend the layers to produce a usable image. You first might make some curves or levels adjustments, to try to match the brightness of the various layers. It won’t be perfect, but the closer the better. You can also arrange the layers changing which layer is on top. This helps to find the best overlap to aid in the manual blending process.

The magic occurs when the various layers are masked to manually blend the image. The secret here is to use the image that is covering the majority of the scene and manipulate the masks so that it blends the various elements of the image, letting through the images below. Add a layer mask to this layer and then invert the mask (so it’s black). Choose a medium sized paint brush and paint the mask in white to reveal the areas of the image below that you want to see. I start with masking the layer that has the most features that most need hiding or blending. It takes a little practice to see what needs to be hidden and what needs to be revealed and which layer is best on top. But try several arrangements and choose the best result. Below is the result of my layer swap.

Here’s the same image that’s partially masked using a small paint brush with soft edges.

Continue to paint the various features to hide and reveal the areas of the image that provides the best blending. I use a smaller brush with soft edges in a jagged path in areas of finer features. I also like to paint little features so that they lie entirely in one or the other frame. On this image, the crane hook is a perfect example. It split the frame. But whenever possible these important features should lie on one frame. So try to blend the image accordingly. After a little work and experimentation, the image should begin to come together. Here’s what part of my mask looks like.

Depending on your image, you’ll need to duplicate this process on several layers to encompass the entire scene. Sometimes I’ll also do a little blurring of the mask, to help blend the masking even more. It’s not always needed but can sometimes be helpful. If you mask too far and hit the edge of the image below you can step backwards or paint it over again with a black mask color to hide it again. If you’re not familiar with Masking in Photoshop, I’d encourage you to do a little research. There are many masking techniques that can be used and help with manually blending the panorama.

When you’re happy with the image, you can flatten the layers and proceed with the rest of your processing needs. The image I used in this tutorial is a custom white balanced IR image. I generally convert these to B&W, add a little contrast, touch-up and complete the image. Here’s the final result of this panorama.

If your panoramas have a larger exposure difference between frames, you’ll need to do more work on the front of the process. When I forget to shoot my pano’s in manual mode, the resulting exposure difference is usually pretty small and this process works well. This is certainly not a catch-all process. But I can typically generate better results with my manual method vs. what Photoshop does with the automated assembly.

I’ve also use this manual blending technique on a very large 8 frame panorama of the Orion Nebula (over 63MP). The automated results were nowhere close to what I wanted. So I had to manually assemble and blend this image. So the next time you have some panorama images that you thought might not be usable, try a manual panorama assembly and see if you can recover the image into something usable. Happy shooting (and processing).

Astrophotography Image Processing

Here we are with the final installment of our astrophotography series. We’ve looked at doing astrophotography in the daytime, shooting simple objects at night, and some more advanced equipment and stacking techniques. If you missed any of these, you can catch them here.

In this series finale, we’re going to take a look at some of the processing techniques to get the most out of your astro images. Most of the work is done in Photoshop. But there are also some extra tools that I cover. These will further enhance the results of the images that you process in Photoshop. They are not necessary, but will make your processing go much smoother.

Let’s jump right in with a before and after example. First is an example of an image shot with a simple set-up, using my old first generation, astro modified Canon 300D Digital Rebel. It was shot through an EF 70-200 f/2.8 lens fixed at 200mm mounted on a small equatorial mount. This image is of the Heart & Soul Nebula, along with the double cluster (IC1805, IC1871, NGC 869 and NGC 884). This is basically how an image might look, right out of the camera.

This image is what we’re striving to achieve, after some stacking and processing.

There are probably a thousand ways to process these images. Sometimes it’s better to do a certain step before another step. It requires a lot of experimentation to get a good recipe. I’ve outlined what seems to work for me, in most of my images. There are always outliers that require something different, or some other tools. But generally, these basic techniques will help you get from a rough stack to a decent final image.

Again, here’s something similar to what you’ll have coming out of your camera. If you’re shooting from dark skies, your starting image may be much better. It’s always easier to process images shot from dark skies as much of the work in post-processing is removing the artifacts added by light pollution.

After stacking, it will have a little more detail and less noise depending on your particular subject.

Next, adjust the levels to reduce the black point. Just be aware that if you move the black pointer past the start of the histogram, you’ll be clipping valuable data. It’s also usually better to leave a little space between the black pointer and the start of the left hand side of the histogram.

This is the result after a levels adjustment.

Some astro images will develop a green hue to them. Many times this has to do with light pollution, other times it will arise from processing. But there is a free tool called HLVG that will attempt to remove the green hue. You can experiment with the level of strength required for your particular image. It’s free and well worth installing and using.

Here’s the appearance after running HVLG on the strong setting.

Several of the next processes use a set of Photoshop actions from Noel Carboni. These actions were developed specifically for astrophotography and are available at very small cost. They are one of my go to tools for post processing my images. The tool used on this operation is Enhance DSO and Reduce Stars. This action generally helps pull out some of the faint detail and reduces some of the star intensity. Be aware that this action takes quite some time, so be patient and let it run. Here’s what you get when it’s done.

Similar to the green color filtered above, sometimes astro images will have a stronger gradient across the image. This is especially true if you’re shooting from an area that’s light polluted. The gradient is difficult to see in the small blog images. It is also less severe than what I typically have. These gradients are typically very difficult to remove manually, but luckily there is another tool that helps to remove them. It’s called GradientXterminator (GXT). This tool loads as a filter in Photoshop. This filter is also available at a small cost. But if you’re planning to get serious with astrophotography, it is almost a must-have addition to your processing toolbox.

Here’s the result after GXT has been run on the coarse detail, medium aggressiveness setting. It was followed-up with a levels adjustment, exactly as performed before.

Then finally, depending on the image, I usually follow up the processing with another action from the Noel Carboni set called Increase Star Color. The change is subtle but many times the entire star field will all appear monochromatic. Usually the stars are much brighter than the object being photographed. So the stars can get saturated. This action will help add the proper color to the stars, which adds more dimension to the image.

There are loads of other tweaks and adjustments that can be done to the images. Here are a couple things to keep in mind when making the final adjustments. First, calibrate your monitor. This is important, but more so with astro images. Second, the sky background shouldn’t be jet black. A pure black background tends to make the images look synthetic and over processed. I generally try to keep my black point (as reported by the Photoshop info/cursor over the darkest areas) at about 20,20,20 (RGB), but certainly no blacker than 10,10,10. Third, I found that less is usually more when doing this kind of processing. Use a light hand and the image will look realistic. Heavy handed processing has an appearance that looks edgy and has many artifacts. Finally, have fun. This is a hobby and should be enjoyed as such.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this astrophotography series as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing it. Doing this kind of imaging has been a dream of mine since seeing my first astronomy magazine more than 40 years ago. Sharing what I’ve learned will hopefully help you shorten your learning curve that was nearly vertical for me. Good luck and dark skies.