You may have tried this yourself, trying to photograph a nice landscape with the moon during the twilight hours in the evening or morning. For a landscape like this you need a tripod and a long exposure time. The moon being many times brighter needs a very short exposure time. In cases with such brightness differences you normally make an exposure series as shown here (with tripod!) and use high dynamic range techniques and exposure stacking which is nowadays quite straightforward to use. However with the moon and a bright planet (Mars, or Venus) below the moon this does not work for several reasons:
- The long exposure gives 'stripes' for the stars, planets and the moon as well, because the earth moves
- Even more problematic for the same reason is that the moon, stars and palnet change position across the image between exposures
- The exposure difference is too extreme. Even stacking the cropped moon alone with over 10 images does not yield a nice image
As I will explain here, there is a 'dirty' solution to this problem, which is not as realistic as exposure stacking, but gives a result that is quite true to the experience of the viewer. In short: the washed out moon needs to be cleaned (and not as bright), as well as planets and stars visible as stripes. From the end of the exposure series you copy in a layer and set it to blend mode 'lighten'.
