> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ FEBRUARY 2020[ 78 ]
RETOUCHING THE AURORA BOREALIS
IN ADOBE CAMERA RAW
The thing about the aurora borealis is that when we
shoot it, we can treat it similarly to a waterfall, in that
it’s constantly moving and so we can use a relatively long
exposure to smooth out the motion, or a relatively short
exposure to capture the detail of the light. Before we get
into the retouching, as a baseline for our camera settings,
we should use a high ISO to capture the light. In the dark-
ness that accompanies the aurora, the effects of camera
noise are minimal. We usually need the widest aperture
we can choose, which for me is usually f/2.8. For a fast
shot, I usually use a shutter speed in the region of five
seconds, and for a long shot, I usually go in the region of
20 seconds.For this tutorial, I’ve provided one of my RAW files from
Iceland, shot in September 2019, which you may use freely
for educational and practice purposes. You can download
it here.
Postprocessing our aurora images can be a tricky thing
because these aren’t necessarily images we’re used to seeing
or retouching. This can also give us more room for creativ-
ity, in that the realism conveyed in the image is much more
flexible for the same reason. First off, let’s open the image in
Adobe Camera Raw. You’ll see from here that the exposure
triad for this image is ISO 4500, an aperture of f/2.8, and a
shutter speed of 8 seconds, which gives you an idea of the
settings required for shooting the northern lights.
Photo Effects
DAV EWILLIAMS
I’ll always remember Midge from the Arctic Fox Centre in Sudavik, Iceland, telling me this: “You
photographers have a special way of making the aurora [borealis] look amazing.” He’s right: We do,
and it’s all in the retouching. The northern lights are an incredible display of the strength and beauty
of nature. As a light source themselves, caused by the colliding of plasma ejected from the sun hit-
ting particles in our upper atmosphere, we don’t need a lot of it to get a great photo. Obviously, we
could get a better display with a stronger aurora, ideally with a geomagnetic storm resulting from the
snapback of charged particles caught up in the Earth’s magnetotail.