Software for Night Photography
There are many computer software programs that can help you plan a photo shoot at night or process your images on the computer. I describe some of my favorites below. Since there are a lot of programs listed, I've placed an asterisk next to the ones that I find the most useful for night photography.
Photoshop / Lightroom
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Photoshop & Lightroom*
These software programs are essential if you want to get the most out of the images you've captured.
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Tony Kuyper's Luminosity Masks for Photoshop*
These masks can be extremely useful for processing images in Photoshop. Tony tells you how to create some of them yourself, but also sells actions and panels at a very reasonable price that will automate everything for you.
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David Kingham's Lightroom Presets*
If you prefer to do most of your processing in Lightroom, David's presets can be very helpful when working on night photos.
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Planning Shots
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Google Earth*
This free program has incredibly detailed maps created from satellite images that can help you plan your shooting locations and previsualize your images.
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Stellarium*
Stellarium is a remarkable software program that shows exactly how the night sky will appear from any location around the world at any date and time you choose. .
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The Photographer's Ephemeris*
TPE is another free program that shows the moon phase for any given day and also shows the times and angles of moonrise, moonset, sunrise, and sunset.
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Stitching Software
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Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE)*
This is a remarkably good program for stitching images that is avialble free of charge for non-commercial use. It is not compatible with Macs.
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Hugin
This is another very good free stitching program that is compatible with both PCs and Macs. It can, however, be a lot slower than Microsoft ICE.
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PTGui
This is a stitching program you can buy if you don't have luck with other programs. It does have a trial version.
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Star Trail Programs
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Floris Van Breugel's Star Trail Stacker*
Floris's free script is the one I use to create star trails from multiple shorter exposures on a digital camera. It doesn't create very noticeable gaps in the trails and you can leave the layers intact to later shorten the trails or create special effects.
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StarTrails.exe
This is a free program that creates star trails that are very similar to those from Floris's script. It may be a bit easier to use, but it doesn't allow you to keep the layers intact.
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StarStaX
This is a very good free program that can create a comet-like effect for you rather than doing it manually after running Floris's script. I find the images produced to be slightly inferior in quality, but otherwise this is a really good program.
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Creative Trails UI
This is a free script that allows you to do many special effects with star trails. However, it does leave noticeable gaps in the trails.
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Star Spikes
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Star Spikes Pro*
This is a good program that allows you create spikes of light around stars. It can also enlarge star size if you make a large number of very short spikes. It's not compatible with Macs.
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Astronomy Tools Actions Set
This is a stripped-down version of Star Spikes Pro that is compatible with Macs and is less expensive.
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Sharpening & Noise Reduction
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PhotoKit Sharpener*
This is the program I like to use for final sharpening of all of my images, whether it be for the web or for large prints.
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Nik Collection
This collection is used to cost $150, but is now free! The programs for sharpening images and for noise reduction can be especially useful for night photography. However, I do find
PhotoKit Sharpener and Topaz DeNoise a lit bit better for these tasks. Those two programs, however, cost more than all seven programs you get here. Other programs in this package
help you convert images in black & white, create different color effects, and produce HDR images.
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Topaz DeNoise*
This is the best program I've found for reducing noise in night photos. It does a remarkable job of reducing noise while keeping the details in the image intact.
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Star Stacking Programs
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Sequator
Sequator is a free star stacking program for PCs. It's fairly basic and easy to use and is a great program for getting started in star stacking.
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Starry Landscape Stacker
This is an inexpensive stacking program for Macs that is fairly easy to learn and works quite well.
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Registar
Registar is a more expensive program with more features that is probably best-suited for advanced photographers who will be doing a lot of image stacking.
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Miscellaneous
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Magic Lantern
This is software you can install on your memory card that adds a lot of features to Canon EOS cameras. The most useful feature it adds for night photography is an interval timer, which you can use instead of attaching an intervalometer.
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