10 replies to this topic

[Bruyere]

Hi,

 

First, to those of you that helped me so much before going to Iceland, I know I owe you some photos! They are amazing!! BUT, I have to edit them, and therein lies the trouble. Does anyone have any suggestions to how to properly edit northern lights photos? I shot mostly 3200 ISO and 2.8 or 3.6 aperture. I've been playing with brightness and contrast, but have no idea how to properly edit these photos. I started with the Nikon raw image software, and am now going to try Corel AfterShot Pro 3 which came with my camera. I do NOT have LightRoom. Have PhotoShop CS4 but does not seem to edit Raw images. Suggestions?

 

Also, how do you create a photo signature? I heard I could write my name on a piece of paper, scan it, and then got lost - something about masking in Photoshop, but over my head....any tips?!

 

Thank you!

Heather

[Merco_61]

If you would like to share a .nef with us, I am sure you will get a response with documented procedure and settings in various software. You can't upload .nef to the site, but if you use Google drive or Dropbox, you can share a link to the file.

 

Your camera is too new for ACR in CS4 to handle directly, but you can download a free DNG converter from Adobe to get around that problem.

Link for Windows

Link for MacOS

 

To make a signature file, write your signature on a paper with either a calligraphy nib or a felt-tip pen so you have uniform colour in the signature. Scan the signature and crop the scan close. Select somewhere in the signature with the magic wand tool and either add the other parts of the signature to the selection by alt-clicking on them or grow the selection with select similar. When you have selected everything you want in the new file, copy to clipboard. Start a new file with transparent background. The dimensions should carry over from the crop you made. Paste the clipboard content in the new file, deselect and save as a png or psd to preserve the transparency. You now have your signature as a file to use as a watermark.

[Bruyere]

Has anyone told you that you're awesome? Thank you so much! File was too large for DropBox Lite so I used another service, hopefully you can see one of my photos at https://wetransfer.c...3162307/51bcd6 

 

I have downloaded and played with a bunch of software, tried editing white balance, as that's what everything seems to tell me to do, but at least on this small laptop, things are not working right with UFraw, or the Nikon editing software and I just don't understand how I know I've got the settings right.  

 

I will try that signature file instruction, thank you!

[Merco_61]

The link doesn't seem to work.

[Bruyere]

hmmm, I wonder if they only let the person emailed view it. I will try a hyperlink, CLICK HERE see if that works? If not, I have to figure out another service - file is huge, too big for my free account on DropBox and I do not have a Google Drive account but I can see if I can set that up....

[Bruyere]

Signature worked perfectly, thank you!!

 

Hopefully the second link above works for someone - it worked for me this time, fingers crossed.

[Merco_61]

The link works the second time around.

 

I processed the file in Capture NX-D

I started by changing to the [LS] Landscape picture control from [VI] Vivid.

I switched Active D-lighting off from the Auto setting as shot that was close to Low.

I hope I got at least close with a standard night sky setting of 3700K and the tone neutral for the white balance. The ground might need tweaking by selecting it in PS and setting a white balance with more magenta.

 

[Bruyere]

Oh wow, ok, cool! Thank you for the settings, I will try those out, too. I never know whether for the northern lights there is a "correct way" or a "make it how you like it" way - I guess both are good, lol.

 

Thank you, again!

[Merco_61]

The idea behind changing the Picture control and lowering the ADL setting is to get as much information into the sky as possible without clipping when it is mapped into 8 bits for the final resize and save for the web. If you intend to print from the files, staying with vivid colours and some ADL makes sense, especially if the printer can handle 16-bit tiffs in ProPhoto RGB without running into trouble.

 

If you shoot a gray card at night away from light pollution, you often end up somewhere around 3700 - 3800K, so that is a good starting point for most wide-angle astro shots.

[Bruyere]

Actually, I do plan to print some of the images, so that's good information. I couldn't find some of the settings you mentioned in Capture NX-D, which I also have.  Found the Landscape, no problem, but the other settings you mentioned, couldn't see them, like ADL, nor where to change to 3700, etc.

 

From Google, people seem to talk about the importance of first setting the white balance for northern lights images, and noise reduction because of the required high ISO setting....I did not see a noise reduction option in Capture NX-D. And, the software that makes Photoshop be able to see the raw file (it worked!) of course converts to JPG, and I thought that this deteriorated image quality?

 

Anyway, work in progress!

[Bruyere]

Figured it out! I was using the Capture NX-D software on an old and small laptop which just doesn't play well with the software. Now that I'm home, I see all the settings!

 

Bizarely, when I convert images to JPG and TIFF, they refuse to open in Photoshop CS4, but DO open in Adobe Illustrator 5.  Any ideas why Photoshop wouldn't open the JPG converted files? Do I need to run the converter/DNG on them perhaps?