Walkthrough - Night Time Photography & Processing
As mentioned in my previous post, here is a walkthrough from one of my night time shots from start to finish. I'm no expert and there a more than likely other, easier ways of obtaining the same result, but at least I can give you a general idea.
Top photo is the finished version, and the one below is straight out of the camera.
First off, setting up the camera.
A must when doing night photography or long exposure is using a tripod - the sturdier the better. Quite a few of the budget range tripods, although great for starting out with, tend to move very easy even with the lightest of wind.
Make sure your camera is set to shoot in RAW mode and he mode dial is set to Manual with an f-stop around f14.
By exposing for the lighter parts of the image (do this by placing one of the single focus points on a light source more brighter than the rest of the image), and adjust your shutter speed accordingly to get the correct exposure. What I did next was move the dial another couple of notches to the right giving me a faster shutter spead.
For the photo I am using, camera settings were: ISO200, f14 at 20secs. This is going to vary, depending on your subject and/or the time of evening/ambient light.
You can already see how underexposed the photo is, but the majority of the highlight (the street lamps etc) are not totally blown out.
With the photo open in Lightroom and in Develop Mode, I normal use one of my own Presets that I've already saved, but for the purpose of this walkthrough I will show you each step.
LENS CORRECTION The first thing I do is click on the Lens Corrections tab to make sure the correct lens is showing, and also the correct profile is active. A very quick step, but it really does make a difference to your photos. Note: doing this stage at then end of your processing will end up with entirely different results, mainly lighter.
SETTING UP THE BASICS Back up to the top of the screen opening the Basics tab, I systematically work down the sliders until I get somewhere close to where I want to be. It doesn't need to be spot on as that magic comes in the next stage of processing.
Subtle, but you can see the image is already looking better. Note: it's personal preference whether you use the Vibrance slider or the Saturation slider - I prefer the Vibrance option.
Next its on to the Luminance tab. Again, this is personal preferance. Move the sliders left and right on each colour making them either lighter or darker.
I try not to get too carried away with this stage as it can really ruin your photo. Take your time, and you will know when you have reached the right settings.
If you do copy the settings I've used here then you can quite easily change any settings to work with any image.
Now its time for the fun bit - the Exposure Brush.
The Exposure Brush When using the Basic tab for developing, you are affecting the whole image, where as with the Exposure Brush you are adjusting only areas that you want to adjust. You have the same settings available to you as in the Basic tab with one highly benficial addition - you are in charge.
Ideally, you would find it a lot easier using a graphic pen and tablet, but you can still do this with a mouse, albeit its a tad more finicky. Press the Spacebar to zoom into your photo, and press again to zoom out.
Pressing the K key activates the Exposure Brush, so the first thing I will do it up the Exposure (obviously not too far), then paint and area of my choosing. Pressing the A key activates the Auto Mask tool, which is great of detecting edges etc. Use the left and right square bracket key '[ and ]' to adjust the brush size. I won't paint into all of my chosen area straight away, just enough to get me started so I can make more adjustments if need be. Once happy with the exposure settings I finish of painting the rest of the area.
Below you can see I've started to paint onto the old ship, and it's already standing out from the background.
Whenever I paint a different area of a photo, I always click the New option to create a new Exposure Brush. I may want to keep the same settings, but then again I might want something a little lighter or darker.
With a new Exposure Brush active I start on the left handside building area, using similar settings to the first brush, and adjusting as I go along. If I make a mistake, holding down the Option/Alt key will let me 'erase' parts of the painted area.
You will notice that every time you create a new Exposure Brush, a little button appears on the screen. By clicking on any one of these buttons, you can adjust/re-adjust the settings of the brush. If you can't remember where you have painted, hold your cursor over one of the little buttons, and a mask will temporarly appear showing you where you have been. Move the cursor off the button to hide it again.
If you want to check a before and after photo, press the \ key while to bring up the original, pressing \ again will bring back your edited version.
In a nutshell, that's it, that's how I process my Night Time images, in fact, its how I process all my photos. Ok, sometimes I don't need to use the Exposure Brush to this extent, but you get what I mean.
I really hope someone will find this walkthrough useful - don't be shy, leave a comment below or share this article.
