Removing orange horizon glow

[george7378]

Hi everyone,

I often take pictures of things like satellites and constellations which hang above the horizon. My camera seems to really magnify the light pollution in the distance, and as you can see, it produces an unpleasant grainy glow which makes the photos look noisy and grainy. I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to get rid of it, or at least make it a little 'softer' to avoid those rough gradients without losing anything from the image? Thanks - here is an example:

[Tim]

What software are you using to process the images?

For photoshop there is a plugin called GradientX which might help (I havent tried it), or for a better method the dynamic background extraction tool in Pixinsight is very good.

Any method will struggle with the foreground trees, it might be worth selecting them and pasting them back on as a separate layer after the gradient is removed.

Cheers

TJ

[BlueAstra]

You could try a 2" light pollution filter attached to your camera lens with a step up (or down) ring.