After many years of processing night photos I have run into many barriers that required special processing techniques.

Challenges like airglow (a green cast or glow in the sky), light pollution from nearby cities, and the orange haze present in nearly all night photos have seemed impossible to correct in Lightroom alone, until now.

Even advanced Photoshop users may find these useful to have a better starting point from their raw files.

White balance presets for different types of light painting, and new sharpening and noise reduction presets are included as well.

  • Add a Little Blue - Sometimes night images can be improved with a touch of blue added to the sky
  • Add a Lot of Blue - and sometimes you need a bit more
  • Airglow - If you have a green cast in your sky it is most likely airglow and it is best to remove it unless it adds to the image.
  •  The strong preset is very aggressive.
  • Haze - This preset works like magic to remove the orange cast from the sky, give it a try, you probably don't even realize it's there!
  • Light Painted Presets - These have different white balances for each type of light you may use. This is generally used when you light paint in a separate exposure, or double process a raw file and combine the 2 exposures in Photoshop.
  • Light Pollution - These presets remove the strong orange light domes from a city on the horizon.
  • Sharpen and Noise - I have spent endless hours finding the perfect balance of settings for night photos, in the advanced presets I have refined these further. The 'Easy' preset is the best all around setting I have found for night photos. If you prefer to dial in the exact settings for your camera start with the 'DIY' preset instead, this has all the correct settings, but with the amount sliders set to zero. Start by bringing up the 'Color' slider until the color noise is gone, don't go too far or the stars will lose color too. Next, bring up the 'Luminance' slider until the noise is at an acceptable level. Finally bring up the 'Amount' slider for sharpening the image to an acceptable level.
  • Fuji Sharpen and Noise - I have found Fuji cameras need a different style of Sharpening and Noise Reduction.
  • White Balance Dark Sky - This is the same preset found in the original Nightscape presets, included here for convenience and should be the starting point for all night photos.