Noise

Cutting Through the Noise: Lightroom Just Made Night Photography Better

While Adobe’s focus is on creating benefits for all photographers, every now and then they come up with a feature that is a huge benefit to us night owls, in particular.

This is the case with their latest Lightroom update (12.3). As of today, Lightroom users have AI noise reduction—and we’ve tested it, and it’s excellent. For those of us shooting high ISOs at night, this stands to be a game-changing addition to our processing workflow. Simply put: It makes night photos better.

Milky Way at White Pocket. Nikon Z 6II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S lens at 24mm. 2 minutes, f/4, ISO 1600 (foreground); 8 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400 (sky); blended in Photoshop. Both images used Adobe Lightroom’s new Denoise slider at a setting of 23.

Adobe’s new Denoise tool works seamlessly within the Lightroom raw workflow. It can be applied to images just out of the camera or to images that you have already labored over in the Develop module—including those you have processed using complex masks.

The process of ridding your images of noise in Lightroom couldn’t be easier. Check out the following video for our tips and tricks on using Adobe’s fantastic new AI noise reduction feature.

Of course, this isn’t the only update Adobe made this week, but we wanted to immediately get you the news on this huge improvement for night photographers. Be sure to check out our blog post this coming Saturday, in which we’ll cover more about Denoise, plus other new features that will help out night photographers.

Tim Cooper is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. Learn more techniques from his book The Magic of Light Painting, available from Peachpit.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS FROM NATIONAL PARKS AT NIGHT

Testing Your Camera’s Tolerance For Long-Exposure Noise

Testing Your Camera’s Tolerance For Long-Exposure Noise

Noise is the addition of unwanted grain or splotches of color in our digital photographs. It can occur by using a high ISO such as 6400 or using very long shutter speeds that last into the minutes. In some cases, noise is a necessary evil that we need to accept, while in others, we should do everything possible to avoid it. As night photographers we need to understand the limits of our cameras and the effects of pushing them too far.

As you may have guessed from experience with your camera’s settings, there are two types of noise: High ISO Noise and Long Exposure Noise. Both are exactly what they sound like.