How to process RAW Night Photography

[RobbieG]

Hi all,

I would appreciate some advice on processing raw photos.

What could I do to improve this? It is my first attempt at night photography as well as processing raw files.

This shot has been basically imported into lightroom 3 and then used auto tone.

When I first import into lightroom, it appears defaults are set automatically? Is this equivalent to the in camera processing for a jpg? or is auto tone roughly what happens in camera?




Camera Canon EOS 500D
Exposure 25
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 200

[navcom]

Lightroom imports your images in a loss-less format like RAW. You can make changes to the images and they won't affect image quality until you export it to a JPG. It appears you might have something set in Lightroom that automatically applies an auto setting. I'm not at my computer where I have Lightroom installed so I'm not sure of any specifics to tell you.

[LeeR]

First, you cannot assume that the presets being applied to your image in LR when you first open it bear any resemblance to the jpg processing that would have been done it camera. There should be a little box under the histogram that tells you what processing is being applied; either "as shot" or "custom" or one of several other presets.
As for this shot; I kind of like it. You certainly nailed the white balance and the overall composition is pleasing. As for tweaking it, I don't know that there is much you can do. If you look at the histogram for this image you will see that it is badly underexposed; about 2.5 stops. That means anything you to do try to improve this image is likely to create a great deal of noise. I found that increasing the exposure by one stop and then using the luminance and color noise reduction in ACR (both at about 70 percent) gave the image a bit of 'pop' with tolerable noise. You may find it easier to reshoot this just before dawn when you can get a similar effect with a bit of color in the sky and a shorter shutter speed.

[RobbieG]

Thanks for your help/comments, As it was my first night shot, I now have a starting point to work from.

Regards