Using Lightroom and Plug-ins

There are two parts to night photography – shooting and post-processing. Your night images will never look the way you saw it in the field, so post-processing is required. The techniques needed to create the final image are not the same as for other photography genres. In this course, Beth Ruggiero York will walk you through the process from start to finish using Lightroom Classic, Topaz Labs DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI and Gigapixel AI, as well as Starry Landscape Stacker (for Mac) and Sequator (for PC). 

If you don’t have these programs, you can download free trials of Lightroom Classic, part of the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan (https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html?promoid=6JMR7GVW&mv=other), Topaz plug-ins (https://topazlabs.com/downloads/), Starry Landscape Stacker (Mac) (https://sites.google.com/site/starrylandscapestacker/starry-landscape-stacker-free-trial) and Sequator (PC) (https://sites.google.com/site/sequatorglobal/download).

We will be covering the following topics:

• Night image issues
• Different aberrations and how to deal with them
• Types of noise and their causes
• Preparing your night images
• Editing workflow in Lightroom
• Editing workflow in Topaz plug-ins
• Image stacking for noise reduction in Starry Landscape Stacker and Sequator

By the end of the class, you will understand the skills, techniques and workflow needed to process your night images successfully! 

Course Outline:

• Week 1: Night photography issues — learn how to recognize them and understand why they happen and how to fix them
• Week 2: Post-processing workflow in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, including targeted adjustments
• Week 3: Using plug-ins to optimize your images (Topaz Labs, Nik)
• Week 4: Taking your night photos to the next level by stacking multiple images in Starry Landscape Stacker for Mac and Sequator for Windows

Instructor: Beth Ruggiero-York

Beth Ruggiero-York is an award-winning photographer who specializes in night and long-exposure photography. Originally from the Northeast, she and her husband now spend summers on Cape Cod and winters in Arizona, where she is a photographer/instructor for Arizona Highways Photo Workshops and the Desert Botanical Garden. Fluent in Chinese, Beth did photography R&D in China for National Geographic to create their new photo tours, and she has been leading and organizing tours to China and other parts of Asia since 1984, including groups for National Geographic and Smithsonian since 1997.