How to brighten stars in Photoshop?

net1994

Hi All,

I have a photo I took @ Yosemite National park at night. See below. Is it possible to 'brighten' the star trials in this photo without brightening anything else? The rest of the photo is already too bright I think and not too photoshop savy on how to do this selectively.

Thanks!

Here is the pic in question:

Richard

I don't think you're going to get much mileage out of trying to brighten the star trails, which are already close to white. But you can get them to stand out more by darkening the sky (except for the stars, of course).

The quickest and cleanest way I know requires some intermediate level processing:

1. Convert to LAB
2. Create a curves adjustment layer and pull down the lightness of the sky.
3. Add a layer mask to the adjustment layer.
4. Use Apply Image to copy the B channel of the original image to the mask and invert it.
5. Open the curve again and tweak to taste.

The nice part about using channel masks is that you don't waste a lot of time with adjusting selections and the transitions are generally very clean.

HTH,

kdog

What you need is better contrast. Adding a strong S curve in the curves panel will make the sky darker and star trails brighter. It makes the scene look more like night as well.



(Richard chimed in while I was making my post. His way is probably better, but my way took about 10 seconds. )