by Dave Johnson, PCWorld  

Darkness is kryptonite to your photos—all cameras thrive on light. As the sun sets, your camera craves slower shutter speeds (which lead to blurry photos) or demands the flash (which creates harsh lighting up close and does nothing for subjects that are farther away). Recently, a few cameras have emerged that try to solve this problem with fancy handheld low-light shooting modes. This week, let's see how to achieve similar results with your own camera and the photo editing tools.

Use a camera with a low-light mode

The problem with taking photographs in low-light situations is that the camera has little alternative but to leave the shutter open longer to soak up more light.

Now there are new cameras on the market that make it easier to go tripod-free after dark, such as the Canon PowerShot SX230 HS and the Sony Cyber-Shot WX10. Both of these cameras offer night modes—with names like Handheld Twilight and Handheld Night Scene—that work sort of like panoramic stitching or high dynamic range features.

When you take a picture in these handheld night modes, they don't take a single shot but rather a series of them, very quickly, each with slightly different exposures. All of these photos are then automatically aligned, combined, and optimized into a single well-exposed photo that looks like you took a long-exposure night shot.

Tweak your camera settings

If your camera allows it, you can try bumping up your ISO setting. A higher ISO number makes it possible for your camera's sensor to capture more light, but the higher you go, the more noise you will see in the final image.

The key to a steady shot is a fast shutter speed, but that means you get less light. Try switching your camera to Aperture Priority mode and open the aperture as far as it will go (a lower number is a larger opening). The camera will then choose the fastest possible shutter speed for that Aperture setting.

One clever low-tech trick is to use the timer setting on your camera. You may not have a tripod, but you can turn on the timer and set the camera down on the nearest steady surface.

Tweaking Levels in Pixelmator

Improve the levels

You can also try replicating these handheld low-light results in post-production. If you already have a photo that was shot at night and the result is dark and underexposed, you can improve it with your photo editing application's Levels tool. Open the photo in your favorite photo editor (Photoshop Elements, Pixelmator, Acorn, and iPhoto all work) and choose the Levels or Histogram adjustment tool. Grab the slider under the right side of the histogram and drag it towards the middle. As you do that, you should see the photo get brighter, improving the exposure of your photo.

Be aware that you'll only get marginal improvements from the Levels tool before the overall quality plummets, so use it sparingly.

Set the duplicate layer's blending mode to Screen.

Screen it

You can also take advantage of this little Layers palette trick: Open your night photo and duplicate it in a second layer (in Photoshop Elements, for example, choose Layer, Duplicate Layer, and click OK).

Then, in the Layers Palette, select the top layer and change its style from Normal to Screen. The entire image will brighten, potentially improving the shot. If that didn't quite make the grade, you can continue to add new duplicate layers and screen them until you are satisfied. But just like the Levels trick, Screening your photo layers should be used sparingly.

Combine multiple photos

This last technique is similar to what the new cameras do when you select the handheld night modes. Using a photo-stacking mode or program, combine multiple photos taken of the same scene to generate what looks like a long exposure. Image stacking applications are typically used by astro-photographers, and most are made for PCs. However, there are a few Mac-compatible applications you can test out, such as AstroStack and Keith's Image Stacker.

These techniques may not be as simple or convenient as just pressing a button on a Nikon CoolPix P300, but experimenting can be a lot of fun as well.