@LexB
To correct means to replace wrong by right and people have been killed when whatever was deemed wrong was “corrected”.
We do not have to limit ourselves to what might be right, we can also use the freedom of expression (where and while it exists) and try to create, create something that others might call wrong. Museums are full of such stuff.
PhotoLab has a few tools that “correct”, others allow artistic use too - and I thank DxO for that.
Indeed. And I just went on to the NASA site and found photos there that show the Milky Way as “blue” when viewed as visible light but orange when viewed as infra-red. Come on NASA, which is the truth? 
Hi Joanna,
At this moment I’m on holiday in France and I don’t have screenshots on my laptop to show and illustrate the adjustments I’ve mentioned. I agree that screenshots of the adjustments are easier to understand than just a bunch of words. Tomorrow I’m traveling and my WiFi-account will end soon.
But I have a link to a website where these principles are explained. But be aware this website has a lot of usefull information on post-processing of astro photos.
The first link: https://clarkvision.com/articles/astrophotography.image.processing.basics/ . See figure 7 and the text below how to subtract the light pollution.
Another usefull link of the same website explaining the basics and the colour of the sky and Milky Way is: https://clarkvision.com/articles/night.photography.image.processing/
Maybe I’ve used the wrong word (corrections), maybe ‘adjustments’ is what I meant. And if you like the blue sky and blue Milky Way it’s your decision of the artistic interpretation you’re showing us.
BTW: English is not my native language, so I hope I express it properly
Where? We live in Brittany
If French is easier, use that.
Ah! just seen you are from Holland. In that case, I would be lost.
Hi platypus,
Thank you for the correction of my use of the word ‘corrections’. What I was trying to explain was ‘adjustments’.
And yes, if someone wants us to show her/his interpretation of something I’m not going to say that’s wrong.
But maybe someone doesn’t know what the natural colour of the sky and Milky Way is, but wants to achieve that. I think that any usefull information can be helpfull.
My intention is to be helpfull, not to judge if a picture is wrong or right.
I’m dutch
It’s our last day in Candé-sur-Beuvron. Last week I tried to make photos of the Milky Way nearby, but there’s to much light pollution in this region. Post processing these shots at home will be difficult.
Tomorrow we’re traveling to Volvic, nearby Clermont-Ferrand. No change to take pictures of the Milky Way.
Maybe later on we will visit the region of the Morvan with less light pollution of human nature, but I think at that moment the moon is the biggest source of light pollution.
And French is very difficult for me. Luckily my wife speaks French 
The links I mentioned are from the website of Roger N. Clark.
He’s working at NASA: https://clarkvision.com/rnc/index.html
I like this one.
I like both.
Hi
I vote for this one, the other is too blue to my taste.
Regards
Great image (in any version) and great explainers. It was a previous post where someone explained the curve tool that made my brain light up.
I’ve done a bunch of recent processing with that in the forefront of my mind and the curve tool is used in nearly every image and nearly always a very subtle S curve. It doesn’t take much to make an image ‘pop’.
I just wish that PL’s curve tool was bigger, to allow more accurate placing of the curve.
Combined with a Levels tool that allows the curve to reflect a limited range rather than the whole range all the time. When you have a shot like this, which only includes information from 0 to 84, it severely limits the adjustments you could make if that range were expanded to 0 to 255.
This area around clermont has nice dark spot to observe the milky way : Light pollution map
I’m sure you will enjoy.
We use that map and, as you can see from this link we are very fortunate where we live, despite the bright spot of Lannion.
On the last night of my holiday in France I got the opportunity to take pictures of the Milky Way.
The location was nearby Chaumot which is west of the Morvan region.
This image is the result of a stack of 30 photos without a tracker: 13 seconds, f/4, F=14mm, ISO 6400 with the Nikon Z6ii and the 14-30 lens.
My workflow is:
Photolab: to convert NEF to TIFF. These TIFFs are used in the next step
Sequator: stacking with the option to freeze the foreground. Stacking is necessary to get a better signal-to-noise ratio (reducing noise). The resulting TIFF is input for the next step
Affinity Photo: to convert the TIFF file to a PNG file. This is necessary because on a Windows PC the RNC-color-stretch can only work with a PNG file. Also to select the sky region without the foreground as this part of the image is taken to the next step
RNC-color-stretch: stretching the sky region to make faint details visible. This is a trial and error proces to find the ‘optimal’ parameters for a decent result
Affinity Photo: blend the result of the Sky-stretch back with the foreground. Also for final adjustments on contrast, brightness and saturation.
I use Photolab only for the RAW development with a minimum of settings/adjustments:
Only optical corrections, and with ‘Lens Sharpness’ = Off.
Because ‘Lens Sharpness’ = On creates black halos around the stars.
Sometimes I also set the setting ‘Vignetting (optics module)’ = Off, because this adjustment can cause banding issues when stretching the image
White balance = daylight (5200K, tint = 0)
DeNoise = DeepPRIME
I use Affinity Photo for the final adjustments and not Photolab because I find the curve tool in combination with the masking possibilities more advanced in Affinity Photo. The panel of the curve tool is bigger and is showing the histogram. And the adjustments of the curve are better manageble by using the picker tool. The coordinates of each point on the curve are also visible and moveable in little steps using the keyboard.
Lex
Lovely sky but I, personally, am not a fan of the foreground. But the world would be a boring place if we all thought the same 
