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The one thing that finally made my Milky Way shots pop
I spent like 2 years stacking astro photos and wondering why my Milky Way always looked muddy and flat compared to other people's stuff. Then a guy on YouTube casually mentioned that he darkens the black point in his raw converter before even touching the curves. I tried it last month on a shot from a dark site near Flagstaff and the difference was immediate. The dust lanes actually had depth instead of just being a gray smear. Anyone else been doing this the whole time and just never said anything?
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the_eric4mo ago
Starting the blacks lower in the raw converter gives you a way cleaner base to work from, kind of like cleaning the canvas before you paint. Most people try to fix contrast in Photoshop but the raw file itself needs that deep shadow information pulled out first. It's one of those small workflow changes that saves you twenty minutes of fighting with masks and curves later on.
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sammartinez4mo ago
Pulling shadows down in raw always gave me cleaner edits too.
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