LIGHT ROOM Skill s
Discover the techniques that help you make a night-time sky sparkle and a landscape glisten after a nocturnal shooting session
Moonlit landscape: Tips and techniques to make a night sky sparkle and a landscape glisten in Lightroom Classic
SOFTWARE Lightroom Classic 7.1 GET IT FROM www.adobe.com Get Start file from The Resources folder on the disc
We’ve all shot our share of landscapes during golden hour, or even during the day, but how many of us have shot
landscapes at night? The challenge of shooting in the dark is a refreshing change to shooting during the day. All the rules go out the window. There’s no shooting at f/16. It’s hard to find focus in the dark – and on top of that, how do you even compose your shot?
There’s a trick, of course, and that’s to wait for the full moon. A few days before or after the full moon, the land at night is lit beautifully. Often it can even look like daylight with a hint of stars. But you still have to process the files to get the most out of them…
1 WHITE BALANCE
The first step is to set the white balance. Our start file has a lot of magenta in it, so it needs a healthy dose of correction from 51 to 17. To keep the night-time feel, the shot needs an injection of blue; a Temperature setting of 3,700K works.
2 ADJUST THE BLACKS
The image needs to remain a little dark, otherwise it just looks like it was shot during the day. Setting both Blacks and Shadows to -20 helps maintain an edge of darkness in the main parts of the photo.
3 BOOST THE STARS
We’ve helped the dark, and now we’ll help the light: our stars. Boost the Whites to improve the lighter parts of the photo, leaving the darker parts alone. Around 40 looks great.
5 SHARPENING
Go to the Detail panel and increase Amount to 40. You only want the sharpening to affect the edges, so set Masking to 40 as well. One benefit of moonlit shots is low ISO, so unless you need it, leave Noise Reduction alone.
4 ASSIST THE FOCUS
As night-time shots are often done with prime lenses, the depth of field is quite shallow, so let’s make what is in focus even better. First, boost Clarity to taste. 25 is great on this photo.
6 FINISHING TOUCHES
Go to Effects, and set Vignette Amount to -20. This helps focus the attention by darkening the edges. Some Dehaze (about 15) can also boost the night-time feel. Because Dehaze darkens the shot, Exposure of 0.20 will bring this back a little.