Learning Photoshop

So I've been wanting to learn some photoshop techniques to enhance my milky way photos that I've been doing. A quick search on youtube brought me to Kenneth Brandon's video 'How to edit the Milky Way'. So I tried out his method of editing the milky way, which involves photoshop and creating layers and layer masks and a bunch of other stuff that I didn't know about. His 15 minute video took me over an hour to get through as I followed along editing one of my photos.

What I've got here is a before and after. The before is the method I used with just the tools in Lightroom, which I was pretty happy with in the first place. There is a huge difference in the clarity of the milky way. Now I probably won't do all my photos like this, just the ones that I really want to pop.

Before

After