3 QUICK TIPS
[‘Lichter’] slider, bringing it down completely, while the ‘Shadows’ [‘Tiefen’] are adjusted up. I make tweaks to the ‘Whites’ [‘Weiß’] and ‘Blacks’ [‘Schwarz’] by eye, to +31 and –8 respectively, but this is down to personal taste. By adjusting the ‘White Balance’ [‘Weißabgleich’] towards blue, the snow appears white and not too greenish. I boost the ‘Contrast’ [‘Kontrast’] and move the ‘Clarity’ [‘Klarheit’] slider up to +10 in the foreground and down in the background, with slight tweaks to the ‘Brightness’ [‘Helligkeit’]. After removing noise with the ‘Noise Reduction’ [‘Rauschen reduzieren’] tool, I’m ready to move on from the RAW converter.
Screenshot 4: The layers can be combined (above), by selecting ‘Reduce to one level with one below’ [‘Mit darunter liegender auf eine Ebene reuzieren’]
Calibrate the screen to get the best colours in your final image, as devices often have a different white balance.
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Check the internet for plug-ins or tools that make your work easier, or to find new effects.
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Look at your finished picture again on the next day, as you’ll often find something that’s been overlooked.
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The next stage involves working with luminosity layer masks (see Screenshot 3) in Photoshop. I find the plug-in TK Basic panel tool is useful for making luminosity masks, because it’s an easy way to create layers automatically. Within a layer you can create an ‘S’ curve in the ‘Tone Curve’ [‘Gradationskurven’] panel, which represents portions of the image; this darkens the shadows in the lower third of the curve and lightens the brighter portions of the image represented by the curve’s upper third. I make an ‘S’ curve for all the lighter tones, or ‘Lights’ (marked as L1 to L5 in the tool) so that they shine beautifully; I leave the middle tones untouched when I process night shots. I then draw an ‘S’ curve for the ‘Darks’ (marked D1 to D5). The exception is ‘Darks-1’, the category’s first section, where I boost the shadow to make the image brighter and more natural.
The ‘Lights’ can be enhanced more by using the brush tool over an extra layer (created by making a copy from the image to a new layer by right-clicking the mouse). In Photoshop’s ‘Lighten’ blend mode I move a soft brush with low ‘Opacity’ over the areas of city lights, snow and aurora. I do the same for dark-shaded areas in the ‘Darken’ mode. After this I pull the two layers (the copy and the original) together, with a right click on the copy layer, and combine with the lower layer (Screenshot 4,).
Finishing touches
Finally, I add a softening effect by drawing over the lights with the soft brush tool and making them shine, to give the picture a nice, glowing look. By using the AF-panel, the effect is possible with a mouse click. I’m careful to only apply this effect to the light areas, leaving the dark areas untouched – otherwise the picture can lose its coherence and look blurry. The AF-panel automatically makes a perfect layer for that, so there’s no need to create extra ones. After that I sharpen the image with the RAW converter. I may need to make more tweaks to ‘Saturation’ or turn the ‘Dynamic Range’ lower, as these can often change during the editing process and result in the snow losing whiteness. To finish, I save my aurora image as a high resolution JPEG.