MintGradeNight photos contain small bright lights and large dark areas. A strong blanket exposure increase usually reveals noise while making signs and lamps flare.
A practical way to approach it
Keep the blacks believable
Raise exposure until the main subject can be identified, then protect neon and lamp highlights. Some dark shadows belong in a night scene.
Balance different lights
Street lamps may be orange while shop signs are blue. Use tint and local masks instead of demanding perfectly neutral color everywhere.
Test the atmosphere
A small cool-shadow bias or a restrained grain finish may suit a city scene. Review halos around bright lettering at 100% size.
One limitation to remember
Color grading cannot remove heavy sensor noise or reconstruct clipped sign lettering.
Continue in MintGrade: Color controls
Raise exposure until the main subject can be identified, then protect neon and lamp highlights. Some dark shadows belong in a night scene.
Opens the relevant controls for JPG, PNG and WebP files. No edit is applied until you choose one.
Open color controls in MintGrade →