Take your eyedropper tool and click on one of the lunar seas. Zoom in on one of the lunar seas-the broad, darker splotches-which should be a medium gray (unless you’re shooting near sunset and get a golden glow from the sun). The SOOC color balance of your moon may be off. Let’s begin with a full moon photo in Lightroom. Then we’ll look at blending two exposures, one shot for a landscape and one for the moon, using Photoshop. Other programs will have similar features.

And, because there are actually some faint colors in the moon, you can boost saturation more than you might think.įirst, we’ll process a full moon on a dark sky using Lightroom. Because the moon is so bright and a long, long ways away and because you’re shooting through a lot of atmospheric haze, you’ll need a fair amount of sharpening and clarity, and an unusual use of contrast. Processing moon shots is a lot like processing any other photo, but there are some important, and some counterintuitive differences. You just need to know how to tweak those RAW files and bring out the best in your images. You did read my article, “ How to Photograph the Moon and Make It Look Stunning,” didn’t you? Yes? Then you have all the basic data in your files. You just need to know how to process your moon photos and make them look stunning.

Now you sit down at your computer and they’re dull, dull, dull. They look fantastic on the screen on the back of your camera. You were out half the night getting great photos of the moon.

Black moon software details