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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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2 Answers 2

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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:

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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

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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.

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Voila

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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\$
    – Dale Gribble
    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\$
    – Dale Gribble
    Jul 13, 2017 at 1:14

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