How to Take Night Sky Photos and Beautify Night Images
Last Updated on September 23, 2025 by Peter Wood
Night sky and star photos always attract people’s eyes. When looking up at the starry sky, you may perhaps be full of longing and yearning for the vast universe. The night sky is a mystery bringing a sense of romance. Stars are so magnificent that human beings are mesmerized. Taking night sky photos seems to record the fantastic scenery, while it is tricky to photograph night sky photos. Expect the location or other natural factors like weather and the moonlight. What can you do to take good night sky photos? Read this tutorial and take better night sky photographs through the basic skills.
Part 1. Preparation for Shooting Night Sky Photos
To take incredible night sky photos, you need nearly three elements. The first key element to photographing the night sky, stars, or Milky Way is Time.
The perfect time to shoot the night sky is highly dependent on the moon phases and the time of year. Supposing that if there is a moon in the sky, you can hardly see stars. Therefore, when taking night sky photos or starry sky ensures that the moon is not visible, stars appear as bright as possible. But if you want to photograph the moon, you also need to select a good time.
The second equally important item is the camera includes manual mode functionality that shoots in RAW format. Likewise, a sturdy Tripod is required. A good performance digital camera is essential to take night sky photos, capture long exposure images of the night sky and provide a larger surface area. Moreover, a well-built tripod reduces the shake of the camera.
The third necessary item is a powerful Photo Editor. Photo editing should be one of the most rewarding parts of the night sky and landscape photography. You can know the best photo editor to process night sky photos below.
Part 2. Take Night Sky Photos with Digital Camera
For shooting brilliant images at night, you need to adjust the camera settings. The two representative digital cameras are Nikon D3100 and Canon Rebel T3i. Both allow you to take night sky photos easily and be fun. First, you should adjust the camera more manually and set white balance into daylight.
Step 1. Set to one shot and set to 1600 or 800 for slow exposure to catch the night star trail.
Step 2. Adjust exposure compensation to zero.
Step 3. Set Shutter speed and use Self Timer to trip the shutter to reduce vibrations.
Step 4. Lock mirror up to reduce camera movement and vibration.
Step 5. Turn off Built-in flash and Red-Eye reduction, which do not relate with night sky photos.
As digital camera use JPEG format as default, the disadvantage is that JPEG format may lose information for high quality. As a result, you can try the RAW file format to preserve all the data in the high bit depth to take night sky photos DSLR.
Part 3. Photograph Night Sky Photos with iPhone
Photographing night sky photos with iPhone is also popular. Furthermore, it is convenient to take shots with iPhone or Android smartphones. As for most people, taking pictures of the night sky with smartphones has three steps, open camera roll, focus the night sky, and click the icon. To some extent, whether shooting night sky images beautiful or not is determined by chance. However, you need to do something more in a few steps, and then you can take good night sky photos with your iPhone.
Step 1. Put your iPhone in a solid place to keep it steady. Even if you shake in a small degree, you can get the shutter to represent the night sky images. Or you can buy a tripod to avoid blurry photos of the night sky.
Step 2. Reduce exposure levels to avoid over-exposed highlights of the night sky. If you take night sky images without setting smart phones’ exposure as daytime, you can find that all objects are brighter than usual.
Step 3. Use a light source to create a spotlight on the object. Though a dark environment can increase magic feelings, images will also be fuzzy and aimless. Thus, you can use streetlights or flashlights to create a dramatic atmosphere.
Step 4. Capture moving objects with a slow exposure. First of all, download a night sky photo app on your smartphone. And then you can use high-speed driving trains with stationary stuff to contrast, like buildings or yourself.
Step 5. Protect your iPhone or Android phone to shoot night sky images in the rain. Drops on night sky photography soft your emotion to stand out.
Black and white film photography is the method to represent high contrast. You can also express mysterious meanings by taking night photos of the sky in black and white.
Part 4. How to Optimize Night Sky Photos via AI Algorithms
It is not easy to take night sky photos even if you have some professional cameras. Because of the long distance between the sky and your position, there should be a haze similar effect in the shot. Moreover, the light source is another important factor to affect the night sky photos. When you need to touch up the photos, WidsMob Retoucher is a versatile method to touch up night sky photos. It is more than noise reduction software and photo beautifier to enhance the photos with AI algorithms, but also has a whole series of HSL enhancements and B/W films. Besides, it also allows you to tweak light sources, apply photo filters, and more.
1. Reduce image noises, recover low light and remove haze for night sky photos with AI algorithms.
2. Provide a whole series of HSL enhancements, color adjustments, and even noise reduction features.
3. Apply Lomo, vivid, dark light, soft light, super nature, and different black and white analog films.
4. Compatible with most RAW file formats, JPEG, JPG, BMP, PNG, AVIF, WebP, HEIC, and others.
Step 1. Once you have installed WidsMob Retoucher, you can launch the program on your computer and click the Import button to upload the night sky photos you want to edit. It supports RAW file formats, JPEG, JPG, PNG, and other generic formats. After that, you can select the photo you want to edit and click the Edit button.
Step 2. Go to the AI Retouch menu on the left side, you can choose the Haze Removal button to fix the image blurry automatically and enhance the image quality with a distinctive natural look. Of course, you can also choose the Noise Reduction button to the Lowlight Recovery button to get the optimal effect for the night sky photo.
Step 3. When you need to further edit the night sky photo, go to the Adjust menu and tweak the HSL enhancements, adjust the color settings, and reduce noise manually. Just choose the saturation, tint, brightness, sharpness, and more. Moreover, you can also further edit the night photos, such as rotating, cropping, and more accordingly.
Step 4. Of course, there are more advanced features, especially for the AI algorithms that you can apply to the night sky photos. It enables you to apply different filters, go to the Filters menu and choose the Psychedelic option to apply the desired effect. After that, you can click the Save As button to export the night sky photo to your computer.
Note: Besides the AI algorithms to enhance the night sky photos, it is the best portrait beautification software to retouch faces, such as removing the blemishes and softening the image in an easy process. It enables you to detect multiple faces and optimize portrait images professionally.
Conclusion
When you need to shoot brilliant night sky photos and post-processing them, here are the excellent tips you should know. Just learn more about the preparation, the detailed process, as well as the best photo editors to take night sky photos. WidsMob AI Retoucher provides multiple AI algorithms that enable you to get the optimal photos.