It’s too easy to fool by clicking in slightly different areas of the frame.

While you could try using Lightroom’s white balance selector eyedropper tool, I’m not a big fan for this type of photography. Milky Way photos tend to have very bad white balance settings by default, because the camera’s Auto white balance doesn’t do well in low light, and other options like Daylight or Tungsten white balance are usually too yellow or blue. It’s a good idea to find a relatively neutral white balance before doing any other edits. Lightroom often overdoes the vignetting correction, and the distortion correction isn’t needed for a lot of Milky Way photos.Īlso, crop your photo prior to doing the rest of the steps below.

Click “enable profile corrections” in the same panel, but feel free to reset the Distortion slider to zero and lower the Vignetting slider substantially.

Make sure “remove chromatic aberration” is selected in the Lens Corrections panel.

Turn off the sharpening and noise reduction settings for now Lightroom’s defaults aren’t great for Milky Way photography.

Set the Profile at the top of the Basic Panel to Adobe Standard, or, if it shows up as an option, Adobe Standard V2.Some of Lightroom’s default settings aren’t optimal for astrophotography. I recommend trying to visualize the edits you’re planning to make rather than shifting sliders randomly. Soon, I’ll publish a separate post about editing Milky Way photos in Photoshop.

Photoshop: If there are edits you can’t do in Lightroom, open your photo in Photoshop after completing all the steps in this article.

Spot: Do any spot healing in areas that need to be fixed, like unwanted airplane or satellite trails in the sky.

I recommend starting broad (gradients) and working your way down to finer adjustments (very small brush edits).

Local: After you’ve gotten a good base, start dodging and burning your photo or making local color adjustments using the gradient, radial gradient, and brush tools.

This includes everything from the Basic Panel to the sharpening and noise reduction sliders, as well as cropping the image.

Global: Start by doing as many slider adjustments as you need.

Here’s the order I suggest for your edits: Global > Local > Spot > Photoshop.

Check Your Edit By Switching the Background to Blackīefore you start doing any edits in Lightroom, it helps to have a plan.

Dodge and Burn the Small Details of the Milky Way.

Make the Milky Way Pop by Editing Everything Else.

Use Range Masking for Local Adjustments.

Pay Close Attention to Color Noise Reduction.

Use Color Grading More Than HSL for Color Edits.

Make Global Edits in the Basic and Tone Curve Panels.

Invert colors lightroom