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 reductionβ€”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 moduleβ€”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.

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Editing Auroras: How to Post-Process Your Northern Lights Photos

If you’ve read our previous blog post, or if you’ve been reading the news, or if you’ve been outside at night in the past two weeks, then you are already aware of the fantastic displays of auroras that have been dazzling observers even at latitudes that hardly ever see the phenomenon.

We were fortunate to have experienced these auroras on our recent photography tours to Iceland and Norway’s Lofoten Islands, which was the subject of last week’s post (β€œSpring Solar Storm Brings a Week of Amazing Auroras”), as well as the subject of our Instagram feed all this past week (and next).

Auroras over Gimsoystraumen, Lofoten Islands, Norway. Nikon Z6 II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 14mm. 6 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 3200.

If you’re outside shooting at night, such an amazing display of northern (or southern) lights tends to generate a lot of of frames to bring home. And that translates into a lot of post-processing on the to-do list.

We’d like to help. So we decided to create a tutorial on how to process your beautiful aurora images.

In This Video

In the following video I’ll show you how I use Lightroom to maximize the visual power of auroras in your night photos. I’ll cover:

  • techniques to control contrast and brightness

  • the Dehaze, Exposure, Shadows and Whites sliders, and how they can be used to better separate auroras from the surrounding sky

  • using profile corrections to even out the sky

  • local and global adjustments to target individual areas of the scene

Your Turn

Have you been out photographing the auroras? We’d love to see your photos! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight).

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.

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Spring Solar Storm Brings a Week of Amazing Auroras

Science makes much predictable, but sometimes the universe still surprises us. It did so again this week, as the strongest solar storm in over half a decade slammed into our planet, creating amazing displays of auroras that extended halfway down the Northern Hemisphere.

The phenomenon started early in the week, when a coronal hole 20 times wider than Earth appeared on the face of the sun. The resulting solar winds were directed right at us, and soon aurora forecasts were sending the Kp index through the atmosphere.

Even before that, reports of Northern Lights were reverberating throughout the night photography world. Over the past 10 days we’ve seen posts on Instagram and Facebook, and received photos and questions from our friends and workshop alums.

Better still, we happened to be running two international night photography tours at the time, both in places perfect for viewing auroras: Iceland’s south coast and Norway’s Lofoten Islands. Both locations provided front-row seats to the most inspiring northern lights show we’ve seen in years.

Below are some of the images we’ve made over the past week and a half.

Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland. Β© 2023 Lance Keimig. Nikon D780 with a Tamron VR 15-30mm f/2.8 G lens. 6 frames shot at 13 seconds, f/4.5, ISO 5000, stitched in Adobe Lightroom.

Flakstadpollen, Norway. Β© 2023 Tim Cooper. Nikon Z6 II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 4 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Iceberg in Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland. Β© 2023 Lance Keimig. Nikon D780 with a Tamron VR 15-30mm f/2.8 G lens, light painted with a Luxli Fiddle. Exposure 20 seconds, f/3.2, ISO 1600.

Nappskaret, Norway. Β© 2023 Tim Cooper. Nikon Z6 II with a Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 2 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Nappskaret, Norway. Β© 2023 Matt Hill. Nikon Z6 II with a Laowa 15mm f/2 lens. ISO 3200, f/2.8 and 2 seconds.

Lofoten Islands, Norway. Β© 2023 Matt Hill. Nikon Z6 II with a Laowa 12mm f/2.8 lens. 6 frames shot at 3 seconds, f/4, ISO 6400, stitched in PTGui.

Vatnajokull National Park, Iceland. Β© 2023 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 10 seconds, f/5.6, ISO 6400.

Aurora over Iceland. Β© 2023 Chris Nicholson. Nikon D5 with a Nikon D5 with a Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens. 2.5 seconds, f/2.8, ISO 3200.

More Information

Want to learn more about this solar storm? Check out:

Want to learn more about photographing auroras? Check out our blog posts:

Your Turn

Have you been out photographing the auroras this week? We’d love to see your images! Share in the comments below, or on our Facebook page, or on Instagram (tag us @nationalparksatnight #nationalparksatnight #seizethenight).

And by the way, the show isn’t over. Auroras are continuing to dazzle dark-roaming photographers. So get out there and seize the night!

Chris Nicholson is a partner and director of content with National Parks at Night, and author of Photographing National Parks (Sidelight Books, 2015) and Photographing Lighthouses (Sidelight Books, 2023). Learn more about national parks as photography destinations, subscribe to Chris' free e-newsletter, and more at www.PhotographingNationalParks.com.

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The Night Photographer's Guide to Star Stacking (Part II)

Note: This is the second in a three-part series about creating star trails with the stacking technique. Part I covered how to shoot the raw materials. In Part II, below, Tim goes over the required post-production. Later he’ll follow up with Part III, in which he’ll show how to clean up the artifacts of the technique (such as plane trails).

Previously I wrote about the in-field steps for creating star trails from multiple exposures. Now we’re ready for the next step, which is how to process those images into one final star trail photograph. And, as a bonus, I’ll include a light-painted foreground shot into the mix!

While there is a variety of software that can process raw files, Photoshop is still the industry standard for compositing images. In this post I’ll use Lightroom and Photoshop to complete our star stack.

The Lightroom Steps

Once your images are downloaded, all the frames for your stack should be together, because you shot them sequentially. For this example, my images are in a Lightroom folder called Inyo Mine (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

At this point you could bring the frames into Photoshop to stack them, but I recommend doing as much editing to the images as possible before sending them over. This could be as little as altering the exposure or as extensive as masking and removing plane trails from each image. I prefer to make adjustments beforehand to maximize the advantages of the raw workflowβ€”once the frames are in Photoshop, they’ll be rasterized and any subsequent image adjustments could possibly hinder image quality in a way that wouldn’t happen earlier in the process.

However, you should note one caveat: We have seen that the more edits you make before stacking, the higher the chance that the final image will suffer from moirΓ©. Now, you might never see moirΓ©, but some photographers do, and some see it more often. The incidence of moirΓ© can vary from one camera model to the nextβ€”for example, we tend to see it more with higher-resolution cameras.

The problem with moirΓ© is that it can’t be edited out, so it needs to be avoided. As you’re getting into stacking for star trails, if you notice that you encounter moirΓ© in your final images often, then it might just be more efficient to do your basic image edits after stacking rather than before. (More on this in a little bit.)

Either way, the edit we see that most often causes moirΓ© in a stack is Lens Correctionsβ€”in fact, it’s common. So that’s the one adjustment you might want to make a habit of waiting until later to make.

However much editing you decide to do, you should ensure that global adjustments are the same on all of the images. Select all of the frames by clicking on the first, holding the Shift key, then clicking on the last (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

For this example I adjusted the White Balance, increased the Exposure and Whites, and added a touch of Dehaze on the first star trail image. We want these all of our global adjustments to be applied to all of the star trail frames, otherwise the stars will look different at various spots in the final trails. To apply the edits to all the frames, with all of the star trail images selected, click the Sync button (Figure 3), click Select All, then click Syncrhonize. (You’ll notice that I did not include the light-painted image with this sync, as I want to edit that separately.)

Figure 3.

Now that the global adjustments are synchronized across all of the star trail frames, you can make any edits that may be needed on individual files, such as removing plane trails, masking etc. At this point I made some adjustments to the light-painted foreground (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Once all of your editing has been done, return to the Library module and again select all of the images you wish to stack (Figure 5). Notice that in this case I have selected all of the star-trail frames as well as the light painting frame.

Figure 5.

Choose Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop (Figure 6). This command does a lot of work for you in the background. It takes each of your raw files, make copies and converts them to TIFF, then sends them to Photoshop, each as an individual layer in one document. Depending on your Lightroom settings, this may produce a PSD or TIFF file. Either is fine.

Figure 6.

The Photoshop Steps

Once the frames begin opening in Photoshop you’ll see them appear as different layers in the Layers panel. The bottommost layer will show as β€œLoad Layers” (Figure 7); this indicates that Photoshop is still opening and placing new files into the document. Be patient with this step. It could take a while depending on how many frames you are using.

Figure 7.

Once the images have been loaded you’ll see the Layers panel filled with your individual frames (Figure 8).

Figure 8.

Click on the top layer, hold the Shift key, then click on the bottom layer (you may have to scroll down a bit). This selects all of the layers so that our next step will apply to all layers in the file.

Now it’s time to change the blending mode, which is how we’ll combine the stars that appear in the different layers. The blending mode is set with a dropdown menu located near the top of the Layers panel (Figure 9).

Figure 9.

We want to change the blending mode to Lighten. With all of the layers still selected, click on the arrow for the blending mode dropdown menu, then from the options, select Lighten (Figure 10). Witness the magic. All of your stars have now combined to create trails.

Figure 10.

How did this work? Imagine the individual layers as individual photo prints stacked on a table. No matter how large the stack, you would see only the topmost print. It’s the same with layers.

However, changing the blending mode on all of the layers to Lighten tells Photoshop that the brightest part of each layer should show through all the way to the top. This means that wherever there is a star in the sky, it will show through.

Figure 11 shows an enlarged portion of the sky, and I have turned off the visibility of all the layers except one (circled in red). This was done by clicking the eyeball off for all the other layers, thus turning off their visibility.

Figure 11.

In just that one layer, you can see that the star trail is quite short. But when I activate another two layers, the trail lengthens (Figure 12).

Figure 12.

This is because the stars on these layers are brighter than the darker sky in the same spots on the other layers. Remember that with the Lighten blending mode, the brightest areas of each layer show through. So when all of the layers are visible (eyeballs turned on) and their blending mode is set to Lighten, you will see all of the star trails from each layer (Figure 13).

Figure 13.

MoirΓ©

Note that this is the point where you might see moirΓ©. It can be caused by the processing algorithm creating just slightly different pixels from one layer to the next. Zoom in to the sky and look for moirΓ©, which will appear as a pattern of bands of somewhat lighter and darker pixels, such as in Figure 14. If you see that, you cannot edit it out. Your best bet is to close file (don’t bother saving), go back to Lightroom, undo some edits, and then re-create your layered Photoshop file.

Figure 14.

In that case, here’s how to troubleshoot:

  1. As mentioned earlier, the adjustment that we most often see causing moirΓ© in a stack is Lens Corrections. If Enable Profile Corrections is on, turn it off, create the stack again, and see if that fixes the problem.

  2. If not, then it’s back to Lightroom. Zero out your most aggressive edits (Shadows at 100?!) and try again.

  3. If you’re still getting moirΓ©, zero out all of your edits, create your stack, and then edit your final image in Lightroom.

We have seen only one case ever where these steps didn’t solve an issue with moirΓ©.

If you are working with only star trail layers, with no light painting layers, then you could be finished at this point. Feel free to jump ahead to β€œSaving the File” at the end of this post.

Masking Around a Different Foreground

It’s been a while since I mentioned it, but remember the other image I opened as a layer, the one with the light painting? Because the lighting in that one layer is brighter than the dark foreground in all the other layers, all that light painting shows throughβ€”again because of the Lighten blending mode. More magic!

However, that light painting layer is causing one problem. That exposure was not made sequentially with the others. I shot the light painting frame before I started shooting the star trail frames. It has stars in it too, and because the blending mode for that layer is also set to Lighten, those stars are showing in the stack.

Figure 15 shows the image with the light painting layer turned on. You can see all of the stars (circled in red) from the exposure I made while light painting. This exposure was shorter, so the stars appear as dots rather than small trails.

Figure 15.

I do want the light-painted foreground from this layer, but I don’t want those star points to appear in the sky and break up my star trail pattern. The solution? Mask out the sky from that layer.

Masking

Selecting and masking in Photoshop is a deep subject and we could spend a summer of Sundays plumbing its depths. To keep this simple, we’ll use a powerful (and somewhat new) selection tool called Select Sky.

The goal is to keep the sky of the light-painted layer from showing in the stacked final image, while still letting the foreground show. This means we want a selection of the foreground for our mask. But in this case (and in many cases), it’s easier to select the sky and then invert that selection so that we have the foreground selected instead.

I begin by clicking on the light painting layer (Figure 16). Clicking on this layer tells Photoshop that when I start using selection tools, the selections will be based on the information from this layer. Then I choose Select > Sky.

Figure 16.

Then I choose Select > Inverse to change the selection to the foreground (Figure 17).

Figure 17.

The selection of the foreground is now active (shown by the marching ants in Figure 18).

Figure 18.

To turn this selection into a mask, all we have to do is click on the Add a Mask icon (Figure 19).

Figure 19.

The newly created mask on the light painting layer (circled in Figure 20) allows the foreground to show (as indicated by the white area of the mask thumbnail) but blocks the sky from showing (indicated by the black area).

Figure 20.

Saving the File

Once you’re done, you’ll want to save the file and send it back to the Lightroom catalog. To do so, select File > Save, then File > Close. Once back in Lightroom, you can continue fine-tuning the edits with a more familiar set of controls.

However, there’s a potential hitch when it comes to saving. Image files with lots of layers can be quite large. The more frames you stacked, the larger the final file will be. The problem is that PSD files cannot be larger than 2 GB, and TIFF files cannot be larger than 4 GB. If your layered image is larger than those limits, Photoshop will complain, and you’ll need to make a decision. You may:

  1. Flatten the layers (select Layer > Flatten Image), which will dramatically reduce the size of the file. This means Photoshop can save the file as a PSD or TIFF, which has the added benefit of taking up less space on your hard drive. However, your layers will be gone forever, so if you want to make layer-level changes in the future, then you’ll need to go through the whole process again.

  2. Save the file as a PSB, which is Photoshop’s large-document format. Simply select File > Save As, and choose β€œLarge Document Format (*PSB)” as the file type. This will allow you to keep all your layers, but will of course use more room on your hard drive.

More Potential Steps

Creating star trails by stacking images has a lot of advantages, but it can also create some artifacts, such as plane trails, or stray light from flashlights or from cars driving by. Working with those artifacts is the next step in your process, and I’ll cover that in the next and final blog post in this series. Stay tuned for Part III, coming soon.

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.

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Ready for Inspiration, Education and Fun? β€” Announcing the 3rd Annual Night Photo Summit

We are thrilled to announce the return of the Night Photo Summit!

Now in its third iteration, the Night Photo Summit is a 3-day virtual conference that celebrates everything night photography. Each year we aim to make it a little bigger, a little better, and to bring you even more opportunities to learn, to be entertained and (of course) to Seize The Night!

We know that there are many night photography enthusiasts out there who are looking to connect and learn, so we created the summit to exalt in the joys of our shared passion. Perhaps you’re hunkered down for the long cold winter, not able or ready to travel, but still keen to expand your knowledge and be better prepared for the coming Milky Way season. Maybe you’d like to learn a new technique to broaden your horizons, or simply long for that kick in the pants that a healthy dose of inspiration can provide.

The Night Photo Summit has all that covered––and then some.

Join us from February 3-5, 2023, to experience 3 days of dynamic presentations from 35-plus world-class photographers, authors, artists, astronomers, and national park and dark-sky activists.

Sessions and Speakers

This year’s summit features sessions on creativity, auroras, publishing photography books and lighthouses, as well as (of course) night photo techniques, including image capture, different ways of combining exposures, lighting, mobile night photography, post-processing and more.

There are classes for all levels, including a series of five recorded presentations that cover all the fundamentals of night photography. You’ll have access to those before the summit begins if you’d like a refresher, or to get you up to speed if you are just getting started in night photography.

There are intermediate and advanced level courses, as well as instructive, inspirational and informative sessions covering a wide range of topics. All in all, the programming totals over 45 hours of learning and virtual adventure.

Our incredible lineup of speakers and talks includes:

  • Albert Dros: β€œCities Come to Life After Sunset”

  • Alyn Wallace: β€œNight Sky Wonders”

  • Chris Nicholson: β€œPhotographing Moonlight”

  • David Zapatka: β€œUSA Stars and Lights: A Lighthouse Project”

  • Dirk Ercken: β€œLight Painting from Within the Scene”

  • Elia Locardi: TBA

  • Forest Chaput: β€œChoosing a Telescope (and Other Equipment) for Deep Sky Astrophotography”

  • Gabriel Biderman: β€œ9 Parks at Night”

  • Harold Ross: β€œLight Painting the Still Life”

  • John Paul Caponigro: β€œNaked Eye, Camera Eye, Mind’s Eye”

  • Joseph DePasquale: β€œUnveiling the Infrared Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope”

  • Katrina Brown: β€œDesigning the Night with Light”

  • Ken Lee: β€œBehind the Book: My Path to Publishing a Monograph”

  • Kevin Adams: β€œ365 Nights: A Year of Inspiration”

  • Lance Keimig: β€œKnow Your Options: Decisions That Lead to Your Best Images”

  • Matt Hill: β€œColor Management for Night Photographers”

  • Michael Frye: β€œReducing Noise with Star-Stacking”

  • Noel Thomas: β€œAstro Time-Lapse Techniques”

  • Pete Mauney: β€œPlane Trails at Night: Visualizing Human Networks”

  • Phill Monson: β€œHow to Put Nature First as Creators”

  • Rachel Jones Ross: β€œA Field Guide to Photographing the Northern Lights”

  • Rafael Pons: β€œMoon Photography Planning (from Beginner to Pro)”

  • Royce Bair: β€œStarlight Blends”

  • Russell Preston Brown: β€œNew Developments in Mobile Night Photography”

  • Sandra Ramos: β€œHow to Keep Your Instagram Account from Being Hacked”

  • Sherry Pincus: β€œThings That Go Bump in the Night: Staying Safe in the Wilderness”

  • Susan Magnano: β€œSpark your Creativity with Luminescent Portraits”

  • Tim Cooper: β€œ5 Photoshop Techniques for Night Photography”

  • … and more to be announced!

Sponsors & Giveaways

Every attendee will be automatically entered into drawings for a large number of giveaways from our generous sponsors, as well as amazing session-specific giveaways from speakers. More info on that to come!

How to Join Us

If you’re into night photography, or if you want to get into it, this is an event you absolutely do not want to miss.

Tickets are $399, and include:

  • 3 days, more than 35 instructors, over 45 hours of inspiration, instruction and fun

  • a Fundamentals series of video classes available on-demand before the summit weekend

  • 1 year of access to re-watch all of the courses

  • a live image review session

  • exclusive glow-in-the-dark summit T-shirt (mailed to attendees with U.S. addresses, and we may be able to help those from other countries too!)

  • personal access to product experts from manufacturers and developers sponsoring the event

  • giveaways throughout the duration of the summit

  • an unprecedented opportunity to connect with like-minded photographers passionate about the night

Moreover, if you purchase your ticket by January 13 at 2 p.m. EST, you’ll get your shirt and a swag bag (USA only) before the summit!

Registration is available now, so sign up today and mark your calendars to join National Parks at Night for the world’s third online Night Photo Summit!

JOIN US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

As if that isn’t all enough, we’ll be releasing plenty more information over the next few weeks. To stay tuned in to it all, we invite you to follow the summit social media accounts on:

We are very much looking forward to seeing you online next month. In the meantime, feel free to ask us any questions via the social media accounts above, in the comments below, or through the Night Photo Summit webpage.

Seize the night … online!

Lance Keimig is a partner and workshop leader with National Parks at Night. He has been photographing at night for 30 years, and is the author of Night Photography and Light Painting: Finding Your Way in the Dark (Focal Press, 2015). Learn more about his images and workshops at www.thenightskye.com.

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