Enhance night photos

Discover how to make low-light shots look their best in Lightroom, with a balance of sharpening and noise reduction

The nights are getting longer. Some people will think this means less time for photography – but really, you can get some fabulous shots at night as well. The key is to max out settings for the most part. Your aim is to get as much light in as possible. Bring your fastest lens; you want the widestaperture lens you can afford. You really don’t want to be narrower than f/2.8. If you can get an f/2 prime, go for it.

Your ISO can be in excess of 1,600, and you’ll be doing 10-30 second exposures. Moonless nights are best for reducing light pollution, so aim for the days around the new moon. Keep an eye out for meteor showers, too, to get more interest in your shots. With long exposures, you’ll need a tripod for stability. You may even want to shoot the foreground and sky separately, and combine them later.

The edit entails working on foreground and sky separately, along with general editing and some noise removal. You’ll make use of the Graduated Filter for a quick selection of each, then use the brush feature in the tool to refine it. To show masks in Lightroom, press the letter O; you can change the colour of the mask using Shift+O.