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Recently I took a picture of the milky way from inside a cave.

I've processed everything how I wanted and it looks great on the web but now I need to print a large version of it (610mm x 900mm). After going back into the file I noticed a ton of redish colour in the shadows of the image around the edge of the cave (as seen below)

I understand this is due to the high ISO and the camera, however, is there any way of limiting this in post processing?

I thought of going over it with a black brush at a low opacity but I'm afraid that at that size it'll look too obvious

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enter image description here

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This is going to be a really quick example of how to do it. You'll have to be a bit more precise when you do it yourself.

Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer by clicking on this icon beneath your Layers Palette:

enter image description here

Now, you can either reduce the saturation of the master (all colors) or select colors individually. In your case, you'd have to do red and magenta

enter image description here

Once your edges look how you want, you'll need to edit your adjustment layer's mask, so it doesn't affect the center of your image.

I did this sloppy and just used a large, soft brush to demonstrate. If you want more precision, use the Polygonal Lasso or Pen Tool to go in and mask the areas you want excluded from your adjustment.

enter image description here

Voila

enter image description here

My two cents:
This image looks pretty suspect to me. The amount of post-processing and photoshop work takes away from the image and makes me think it's just a collage made from several shots. If I'm wrong and it is just a single shot, I'd bump the saturation down a bit and try to reduce the amount of obvious photoshopping.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks! I've give that a go :) Thanks for the feedback ->always appreicated It's 4 shots taken for the milkyway/ sky (exact same place not a composite) and about 6 shots for the foreground blended using light painting with torches, surprisingly the colours in the sky were there as a mix of airglow + light pollution \$\endgroup\$ Jul 12, 2017 at 22:39
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I won't lie, this is a nice picture. where was it taken?

Also, you can create a mask and change the saturation of the image alongside of the cave. I was thinking it would be really cool looking if everything was in B/W except for the sky. Personally, the colors of you and the cave detract away from the main focus of the image - the milky way because they are very strong colors, yellowish and orange.

I think if you do that you will see the redishness of the cave dissipate and you will be satisfied.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Thanks! - NSW Australia :) I think it would look sick in b/w However I feel as though considering the colour in the sky having it also in the rock gives the foreground context and texture instead of black \$\endgroup\$ Jul 13, 2017 at 1:14

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