Seeing a lot of moon photos with the wrong colors lately

I keep scrolling past pictures where people cranked the saturation way up and the moon looks like a orange ball. The moon does have some color variation from iron and basalt but it's subtle not neon. I spent a night last week comparing my own stacked shots against some of these overly processed ones and the difference is huge. A little tweak in curves is fine but if your moon looks like a pumpkin something got pushed too far. Anyone else notice this trend getting worse?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_parker9d ago

Honestly I used to be one of those people who thought cranking the saturation made the moon look more dramatic and cool. But then I took a properly stacked shot myself and compared it side by side with an old edited one I had. The difference was embarrassing. The real color variation is more like a faint blue or gray tint in the mare regions, not a bright orange. Wish I had figured that out sooner.

bettyfox9d ago

Gotta push back a little on the blue part - that's actually from chromatic aberration in your lens or stacking, not a real lunar color. The real mineral tints are more like a very subtle tan or light brown in the highlands, not blue or gray. Have you tried tweaking just the white balance instead to see the actual subtle differences?