Hello all you beautiful peoples. We have a treat from our very own photography reverend himself, Dustin Abbott. He’s come up with a great lesson in nightscape photography, specifically, retouching nightscape images. I’m excited to share it with all of you.

Dustin takes his nightscape photography through the retouching gamut in a Photoshop workflow. Using the quick selection tool, he makes localized adjustments via masked curve adjustment layers. This lets him add contrast solely to the night sky to punch up the stars. There is a bunch more tricks and tidbits in the video, so check it out below.

Dustin, you are a legend. Thanks for making this.

How to Process a Nightscape - Night Sky Tutorial

Vocabulary Lesson

Because there can sometimes be confusion about these terms, here’s a quick explanation in case you aren’t already aware:

Retouching’ and ‘post-processing’ are terms that can be used interchangeably, but ‘editing’ cannot. ‘Editing’ is the process of selecting the appropriate image from your library that you think is the strongest. ‘Culling’ is what you do when you sift through your shots and and disregard the weaker pics and star or flag the stronger ones.

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