Editing Milky Way Photos in Photoshop: The 5 Best Tools

When you edit Milky Way and astrophotography images, perhaps you tend to experience some frustration with Photoshop. Where should you even begin?
The truth is that Photoshop is a huge software, and it can do almost anything you can think of. It's impossible to cover everything in one video, but these five tools in particular are some of the best and most useful ways to add some "pop" to your astrophotography.
The five tools I explain in this tutorial are as follows:
1. How to re-edit any sliders you changed in Adobe Camera Raw
2. How to make natural-looking color edits to the night sky
3. How to selectively edit the foreground in your Milky Way shots
4. How to add a glow effect that's become so popular lately
5. How to post-process just the stars with a smooth selection
These only scratch the surface of Photoshop's tools for astrophotography, but hopefully they give you some good ideas so that you can post-process your photos as well as possible.
Let me know if you have any questions about editing Milky Way photos!
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This video is not sponsored! You can support Photography Life and Spencer Cox Photography by buying anything through my affiliate links!
Here is all the photo equipment I use: bhpho.to/3XUv32a
And here’s my video gear to film this video: bhpho.to/3Yt8th1

[@neodanks454]

Thank you very much!

[@PhotographyLifeChannel]

You're very welcome!

[@SpaceFactsWax]

Thanks for uploading. I had the chance to see a rocket launch in 2018. Incredible experience. I uploaded a pretty cool montage of the trip to my page.

[@kurgo_]

Well, I'm going back to the Milky Way shots I took last summer, I liked them well enough (more than well enough, actually) but I'm curious to see what I can do with these tools. First results will probably be abominations (that's the point of playing with new tools though, that's always fun) but learning these seems pretty handy. Dumb question actually, while I'm at it: what kind of torchlight did you use in that shot? I tried taking such a shot a few times using headlights I usually take to go fishing but they always seem incredibly dim by comparison. Cheers, thanks for the content!

[@PhotographyLifeChannel]

The good thing about all these tools is that you can easily undo or hide them if you don’t like the look. For example, the color correction using Overlay is something you can easily erase, mask out, lower the opacity of, or paint over with a different color. That said, a bit of practice will also help a lot. To answer your question, I fudged this a bit by using a standard flashlight and holding it up to my head as if it were a headlamp! You’re right that most headlamps just aren’t bright enough. A lot of ordinary flashlights are, though. I used one called the Maglite XL200.

[@HamaRizgarr]

Amazing editing

[@PhotographyLifeChannel]

Thank you!

[@HamaRizgarr]

@@PhotographyLifeChannel no problem and it was amazing video

[@PhotographyLifeChannel]

@@HamaRizgarr Glad you liked it so much! If I may, which one of the tips stood out to you the most? I had a hard time figuring out which ones to include or not.