Learning night/astro technique

[mountainjunkie]

Pretty happy with the composition on this one, but know there is much room for improvement. C&C requested. I’ve only been using LR so far but know I probably need to branch into PS for this type of photography. Any tips are appreciated.

 

[Jeff15]

Nice one..........

 

[kalgra]

Not Bad! Thats much better than what I did when I started out.

yes I believe PS is much better suited for processing and blending astro images.

Start looking into luminosity masking techniques both for selective sharpening and noise reduction. Tree sections along the horizon can be tricky sometimes, especially when blending multiple exposures. Luminosity masks using various level adjustments and mask refining is how I personally deal with those situations such as in the section along the horizon in the linked example below.
Longs Peak Milky Way II

There are many good tutorials on youtube. Youtube and practice is how I have learned everything I know about PS but I still learn new things and better tricks all the time. Also I wont lie along with PS a decent Wacom tablet makes all the difference in the world.

 

[mountainjunkie]

Not Bad! Thats much better than what I did when I started out.

yes I believe PS is much better suited for processing and blending astro images.

Start looking into luminosity masking techniques both for selective sharpening and noise reduction. Tree sections along the horizon can be tricky sometimes, especially when blending multiple exposures. Luminosity masks using various level adjustments and mask refining is how I personally deal with those situations such as in the section along the horizon in the linked example below.
Longs Peak Milky Way II

There are many good tutorials on youtube. Youtube and practice is how I have learned everything I know about PS but I still learn new things and better tricks all the time. Also I wont lie along with PS a decent Wacom tablet makes all the difference in the world.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll start digging into PS as I move forward.

Side note; in using LR so far I’ve been experimenting with using the graduated filter tool or brush, or a combination of both depending on the composition. 2 problems with the brush:

(1) much use at all completely slows down the program and my computer. From what I’ve read this isn’t uncommon.

(2) was having a lot of trouble with my horizons, but just realized I think I was actually using too much feather, particularly when “erasing” effects from the gradient tool.

Case in point, really struggled with the mountains in the background on this one, think I realize part of the issue now: