You've spent all the time outside late at night, photographing the stars, and now, you have these images with all the potential and you're about to process them. Before you simply dive into any normal routine for processing astrophotography shots, you'll want to check out this new tutorial by Milky Way Mike concerning how to use the Dust and Scratches tool to improve these shots.
With all the tools at our hands these days, we have the potential to capture scenes in more detail and luster than ever before. Particularly with astrophotography, modern day cameras can capture more light with ever-increasing ease, to the point where capturing an epic landscape scene with the starry backdrop of a night sky is becoming more and more popular even among new photographers. Still, shooting at night has its limitations and challenges. The more you start pushing your ISO to higher levels and the longer you leave your shutter open, the more noise and hot pixels start showing up within the frame.
If the concepts of noise and noise reduction are something new for you, then you might want to first take a look at our detailed article about camera noise and other methods for reducing it: "The Ultimate Comparison of Nine Noise Reduction Methods for Night Photography." If, however, you are already familiar with noise reduction techniques and are ready to add yet another tool to your bag of postproduction tricks, then this tutorial is meant just for you. Personally, I enjoyed putting this method to use because it not only helps with noise reduction, but also with mitigating the amount of stars in the sky, which allows me to more easily control the visual focus in the image.
