How to save "polluted" photos of the Milky Way?

The first condition for shooting the Milky Way galaxy is good air quality and visibility, which seems to have become an irrefutable truth in Hoshino photography. However, at present, all cities in China are promoting the so-called lighting project. Although it is convenient for life, too much light is reflected into the sky and becomes light pollution. The most direct manifestation is that on sunny days, people in the city still can't see too many stars, let alone take pictures of the Milky Way. Hoshino photographer Ian

Norman shared how to use Lightroom to save photos of the Milky Way that seem to be scrapped due to light pollution.

Ian Norman, this tutorial focuses more on teaching you how to use the post-software, and the pre-shooting parameters may be slightly different.

In the case of good visibility, the general parameters for shooting the Milky Way are: shutter 30s, aperture f/2.8 and sensitivity ISO.

6400, and in the environment with serious light pollution, the above parameters are easy to lead to overexposure and pale photos. So Ian

Norman suggested that in the light pollution environment, use low sensitivity, such as 15s, aperture f/2.8 and sensitivity ISO 1600.

Comparison of two parameters before and after adjustment. Above: original, below: after adjustment.

Comparison of two parameters after 100% amplification

Finally, I want to remind you that after this "subversive" post-processing, the original film must be in RAW format.

Here are the specific steps for everyone:

1. Adjust the exposure

Left: original picture, right: after adjusting exposure

From the histogram of the original film, it can be seen that the overall highlight overflows obviously. First, adjust the exposure options in the basic module to reduce the overall exposure.

2. Adjust brightness and saturation.

Next, adjust the brightness and saturation according to your own preferences, and adjust these two values to the highest respectively. This can make the starry sky more obvious and facilitate the subsequent processing of color temperature.

3. Adjust the color temperature and hue

Because the color temperature of the original film is not processed, the color temperature and tone of the photo vary greatly after the above steps. So this step is to adjust the tone of the photo to the level of the normal starry sky photo, which is more important and can not be ignored.