That Blue Supermoon photo everyone shared last week had the colors all wrong

I kept seeing that viral picture from August 19th getting reposted everywhere and people talking about how BLUE it looked. Problem is the moon never actually looks that deep blue to the naked eye. I was shooting that same night with my Canon and a 300mm lens in my backyard near Portland and the real color was more of a warm peach with a hint of pale blue at the edges. That viral shot was heavily processed to boost saturation and shift the white balance. It's fine for art but not astronomy. Has anyone else noticed fake colors getting passed around more lately?

3 comments

3 Comments

abby_robinson581d ago

Tweaked my own moon shot with a simple white balance fix in Lightroom and it looked way better without going overboard.

nancy35118h ago

Even a tiny white balance shift makes the earthshine look way more natural too.

williams9021h ago

Ha! Yeah, white balance is like the secret cheat code nobody talks about for moon shots. I've seen people crank saturation to 100 and turn the moon into a neon green basketball and I'm just sitting here thinking, "Buddy, your white balance is off by like 15 degrees, calm down." The moon is basically a giant gray rock in space, so getting that neutral look makes the craters pop naturally instead of looking like a bad Instagram filter. You probably avoided that whole "moon looks like it's from a different planet" trap that half the internet falls into every month.