Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Photography is about light, and one of the great things about the challenge of this tutorial is that it can help you think how the same environment reflects different types of light.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic
Take a daytime image and turn it into night.
When to use
Photography is about light, and one of the great things about the challenge of this tutorial is that it can help you think how the same environment reflects different types of light.
Instructions
- Add a Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer
- Drag the saturation slider down to bring down some of the color
- Add a Brightness and Contrast Adjustment Layer
- Drag the brightness slider all the way to the left
- Drag the contrast slider all the way to the right
- Go Back to the a Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer
- Change the master control to effect:Reds
- Drag the saturation slider down to bring down some balance to the color
Add a moon to the Image
- Drag the moon image above the image layer
- Optional blend technique (example used Blend If on moon: effect blue, in the layer behind)
- Add a new Brightness and Contrast Adjustment Layer and clip to the moon layer
- Change settings to brighten up moon
Create moonshine
- Create a new layer
- Use polygonal lasso tool to make selection of where you want the moonshine to effect
- To select with white: hold down the Command or Control key and press Delete
- Use Blend If on layer: hold down ALT or Option and drag the right side of the shadow slider all the way to the right
- Add Layer Mask
- Use gradient tool, set foreground to transparent, and draw in the faded edges of the moonlight
Create lights
- Create a new layer
- Use small brush on white to paint in lights where they should be
- Set Blending Mode: Overlay
- Create a new layer
- Use larger brush on yellow to paint in glows where they should be around the lights
- Set Blending Mode: Overlay
Finalizing the image
- Add a new Curves Adjustment Layer above everything
- Adjust to suit
Login to download
- 00:05 Hi everyone, Howard Pinsky here with another Photoshop tutorial
- 00:08 based on your requests. Over the last week or two,
- 00:11 I had two or three requests on how to take an image like this: a
- 00:15 daytime image, and make it look like it was shot at nighttime.
- 00:18 Now I made a little bit of a joke on my Facebook page that you can
- 00:22 just simply
- 00:22 create a new layer and fill it with black and, well, there's your nighttime shot.
- 00:26 But we're going to try our best to make it look like it was shot at night.
- 00:29 But we don't want to go so dark that you can't see anything.
- 00:32 So we're going to take advantage of adjustment layers, and a little bit of blending
- 00:36 tricks here and there.
- 00:37 We're going to change in the sky and I'll add a few lights so you can see the
- 00:40 surrounding areas.
- 00:41 Now it's good to know before I begin that every image is going to be
- 00:45 different.
- 00:45 The steps I'm about to take in this image may give you a starting point for
- 00:49 your images,
- 00:50 but you're definitely going to have to play around with the adjustment layers in order to
- 00:53 get a result that looks good for your images.
- 00:55 So let's go ahead and begin. Now the first adjustment layer that I’m going to be
- 00:59 adding
- 01:00 will be a hue and saturation adjustment layer.
- 01:03 This can be added at the bottom of the layers panel, and just select hue and
- 01:06 saturation right here.
- 01:08 Now, if you aren't familiar with adjustment layers, these allow you to add
- 01:11 adjustments and color corrections to your images,
- 01:13 but at the same time keep your editing process nice and non-destructive.
- 01:17 Now that the hue and saturation adjustment has been added, I can simply
- 01:20 drag the saturation
- 01:22 downwards, just to bring down some of the color in the image, because if you take
- 01:25 a look at an image that was shot at night,
- 01:27 you really don't see those nice vibrant colors. We are going to be coming back to the hue and
- 01:32 saturation adjustment layer in a few moments.
- 01:34 But before we do that, we can add one more adjustment layer, and that's going
- 01:38 to be a brightness and
- 01:39 contrast adjustment layer: this one right here, and, as you would expect, we're
- 01:43 going to use this to darken down the entire photo.
- 01:46 So I'm going to grab the brightness slider, drag it all the way to the left
- 01:49 and then grab the contrast slider, and drag it all the way to the right,
- 01:53 which gives us a somewhat dark scene. But, we have a few issues that we need to
- 01:58 deal with.
- 01:58 First, when we increase the contrast, it brought back some of the reds in the
- 02:02 ground.
- 02:03 We want to go back to the hue and saturation adjustment layer to deal with
- 02:06 some of these colors,
- 02:07 because they got a little bit brighter than I'd like them to be. So, towards the
- 02:11 top of this adjustable layer, where it says ‘Master’ - which controls the
- 02:14 overall hue and saturation of the image - I'll be changing this to ‘reds’,
- 02:18 and you can see down here exactly which colors are affected.
- 02:22 So I'll start by grabbing the Lightness slider and dragging it to the left, to
- 02:26 see exactly what happens, and that's not too bad
- 02:28 right there, but if you really want to fine tune which colors are affected, you
- 02:32 can actually grab the slider right here and drag it to the right
- 02:35 to get a little bit more oranges instead of some of the reds.
- 02:39 So essentially, what we did is we targeted some of the reds and oranges of the image
- 02:43 after they were brought back by the brightness and contrast adjustment layer.
- 02:46 And we can reduce the lighting, just to get rid of some of that color and darken up
- 02:50 those portions of the image.
- 02:51 So, if I go ahead and now hide the adjustment layers, you can see the before,
- 02:55 which is this image here, and then we turn the adjustment layers back on and
- 02:59 we have the after.
- 02:59 Obviously, it is pretty far from looking like a nighttime shot,
- 03:03 but you can see the direction that we're moving with these adjustment layers.
- 03:06 Now, the next thing I want to do is I want to work on the sky right now.
- 03:10 Obviously it's blue, with a little bit of white for the clouds, and we definitely
- 03:13 don't want that because that's giving us the impression
- 03:16 that it's a daytime photo. So over at Shutterstock,
- 03:19 I grabbed this image of a moon with some clouds in the background,
- 03:23 and I'll simply drag it over to this image that we're working on
- 03:26 and place the moon somewhere right in the center,
- 03:29 where we can see the gap in the trees. And you can quickly turn down the opacity
- 03:32 in that layer by pressing the number keys on your keyboard,
- 03:35 so you can see exactly where you want to place it. And I'll place that right about
- 03:39 there,
- 03:39 and I'll press 0 on my keyboard to bring it back to 100% opacity.
- 03:43 Now, in the layers panel, I want to make sure that it’s right above
- 03:47 the background layer. I want the adjustment layers above the layer of the moon,
- 03:50 but the moon right above the layer above the background, if that makes any sense.
- 03:54 Now at this point, there are a few ways that we can deal with the sky, and every
- 03:58 image will be different.
- 03:59 If you have an image for the sky that contains a lot of different colors, you
- 04:02 may have to resort to a selection method.
- 04:04 But if you have a pretty standard sky, just blue and a little bit of white,
- 04:08 you can use the Blend If controls, which I love using.
- 04:11 You can access them by double-clicking on the layer above the moon,
- 04:14 again making sure it's right above the background layer, and taking a look at
- 04:18 the blend if section down at the bottom. Let me move this window over to the side
- 04:21 a little bit.
- 04:22 And what we want to do, because the sky is primarily blue,
- 04:26 we're going to switch Blend If from gray to blue.
- 04:29 This will allow us to blend the image with the blues in the underlying layer,
- 04:33 which is the layer that contains the sky. Now you don't want to simply drag the slider to the
- 04:37 right, as that will give you a very harsh result.
- 04:38 What you want to do, is you want to hold on your
- 04:41 Option key in the Mac,
- 04:42 ALT key in Windows, and drag the right side of the slider
- 04:46 to the right. That'll give you a very nice gradual blend,
- 04:49 that blends in really nicely with the background, and you may notice that some
- 04:53 of the clouds at the bottom of the layer haven't been removed, so we can very easily
- 04:57 deal with that using a layer mask. So I'll go ahead and press OK,
- 05:01 and I can add a layer mask in the bottom of my layers panel and simply with a
- 05:05 black brush, I'll enlarge my brush using the right square bracket key,
- 05:10 I can simply paint over top of the areas in the layer that I don't want visible
- 05:13 with a black brush to hide them up, just like this.
- 05:17 So now we've replaced a blue sky with the moon and a much darker sky, but it's a
- 05:21 little bit too dark. If you hop back over to this image,
- 05:24 you notice that it is a lot brighter than it is here, and that's because it's below
- 05:27 the adjustment layers.
- 05:29 So, very simply, we can correct this by adding another adjustment layer that's
- 05:33 clipped
- 05:33 to the layer containing the moon in the dark sky. So I can add an adjustment
- 05:37 layer again, let's say brightness and contrast,
- 05:39 making sure to clip it using this icon right here, and you can simply increase
- 05:43 the brightness just like this.
- 05:44 And I can also increase the contrast just a little bit as well,
- 05:48 but that looks pretty nice right there. So, one more time, let's take a look at
- 05:52 what we started with, I'll go to my history panel,
- 05:54 go back up to the top, and here's what we started with: nice bright daytime image.
- 05:58 And if you look at what we have now, we have a much darker image
- 06:02 with a completely different sky in it, almost looking like a nighttime image.
- 06:06 But there’s still a little bit more we can do
- 06:08 to make it look a little bit more realistic. And one of those things is to
- 06:12 create a moonshine.
- 06:14 Obviously, the trees are split and the moon is shining through,
- 06:17 so we can add a white layer that will highlight some of the areas
- 06:20 that might be seen through these trees. And to do that, I'll select
- 06:24 the very top layer,
- 06:25 and I'll add a new layer using the ‘add new layer’ icon at the bottom,
- 06:28 and we want to make a selection of the area that's going to be a little bit
- 06:31 brighter.
- 06:32 So I'm going to grab my lasso tool from the Tools bar on the left, and grab the polygonal
- 06:36 lasso tool,
- 06:38 and very simply make a selection, that just goes like this:
- 06:41 it tapers down at the bottom and I'll go right back up to the moon where the tree
- 06:46 splits.
- 06:46 Double click to close that selection and we want to simply fill it with white.
- 06:51 So right now, white is my background color, and I can hold down the Command key on the Mac,
- 06:54 Control on Windows,
- 06:55 and press Delete to fill that selection in with white,
- 06:59 and Command or Control D to de-select that selection.
- 07:02 So now that we have that white layer, it’s looking a little bit ridiculous:
- 07:05 we need to do a little bit of blending. I'm going to again use the Blend If
- 07:09 controls, so I'll double click on this new layer,
- 07:11 and I really only want to affect the lightest areas of the underlying layers.
- 07:16 So right down here, just like we did before, I can hold down ALT or Option
- 07:19 and drag the right side of the shadow slider all the way to the right.
- 07:24 Somewhere around 220.
- 07:27 That'll brighten up some of the areas within that cone of light that we
- 07:30 created.
- 07:31 But it's obviously a little bit too sharp, so how do we deal with that?
- 07:34 Well, of course,
- 07:35 like in Photoshop, there are a ton of ways you can deal with something like
- 07:38 that,
- 07:39 but very simply, what I'll do is I'm going to deal with it with a layer mask.
- 07:42 And just like we did before with the moon layer, I'll add a layer mask to this
- 07:45 layer
- 07:46 and to fade out the edges of that layer, I'm going to be using a gradient.
- 07:50 So I'll grab my gradient tool
- 07:51 from the Tools bar on the left, and up here I want to make sure that it is set to
- 07:54 ’Foreground to Transparent’, which is the second one right here.
- 07:57 And I want to make sure the foreground color is set to black,
- 08:01 and once it is we'll press OK and all you have to do is drag a gradient from
- 08:05 the side to your layer.
- 08:06 That will nicely fade out the edges of your layer:
- 08:10 you may have to do it a few times around the layer to make sure all the edges are
- 08:13 nice and faded,
- 08:14 but that'll leave you with a nice cone of light or moonshine right in the
- 08:17 center of your image,
- 08:18 where the trees are splitting and the moon is shining through.
- 08:22 There are two more things we are going to be adding to the image to try and make it
- 08:25 a little bit more realistic.
- 08:26 If you notice in this image, there are few lights, which normally if this image
- 08:30 was shot at nighttime,
- 08:31 those lights probably would be lit up. So we're going to add a few lights to make
- 08:35 them a little bit brighter than they are now.
- 08:37 And to do that we'll add two layers. So we'll start with the first layer
- 08:40 and press the ‘new layer’ icon at the bottom in the Layers panel, we're then going to
- 08:44 grab our brush and we're going to make it a lot smaller
- 08:46 using the left square bracket key, and we want to make sure the foreground color
- 08:49 is set to white.
- 08:50 Then we'll simply add a few white spots right in the centre of these lights: just like
- 08:54 this.
- 08:55 I'll centre a little bit more to add some lights back here in the background.
- 09:00 Again, you can make your brush smaller using the left square bracket key on
- 09:03 your keyboard.
- 09:04 So I'll go through and add a few lights on these light posts,
- 09:08 and once those have been added, I'll change the blend mode of this layer to overlay.
- 09:11 Now taking a quick look at this image, if we take a look at these lights,
- 09:15 they look a little bit funky,
- 09:16 and that's because previously when I masked out the area from the moon layer,
- 09:20 some others areas did not get removed. So I'll select the mask
- 09:23 on the moon layer, right down here in the Layers panel and, with a black Brush, I'll
- 09:27 enlarge it with my right square bracket key,
- 09:29 and simply paint over that area that I want removed and go back over here just
- 09:33 to make sure all that moon layer has been removed from the bottom portion of
- 09:37 this image.
- 09:38 Now, selecting the top layer one more time, we can add one more layer to make these
- 09:42 lights glow a little bit more.
- 09:44 I'll add one more new layer and change the color of my brush to a nice bright
- 09:49 yellow: something right about here, a very light
- 09:52 yellow, increase it just a little bit right about there: press OK.
- 09:56 I want to enlarge my brush quite a bit for this one, so I'll press the right
- 09:59 square bracket a few times,
- 10:01 and very simply create a few spots just like this.
- 10:05 Decrease it as you go back in the scene,
- 10:08 just like that. And once you have your glows in place, you can change the
- 10:12 blend mode of this layer to Overlay,
- 10:14 just like the previous layer. If I zoom out, you can see
- 10:17 that we now have much brighter lights but the image still doesn't look 100%
- 10:21 like it was shot at night.
- 10:23 Now, the final thing that I'm going to do to this image to really finish it off is
- 10:27 add a curves adjustment layer,
- 10:29 right at the top of our layer stacks. So I'll go here to add a curves adjustment
- 10:32 layer.
- 10:33 I'm going to pull down the bottom, right about here, I'll increase the midtones
- 10:37 a little bit, increase the highlights just a little bit
- 10:40 and then tweak it as needed. So if I turn off the curves adjustment layer,
- 10:44 turn it back on,
- 10:45 you can see it's darkened some of the shadows, its brightened up some of the lights,
- 10:49 and overall, we have a much nicer looking image. So if I go to my history panel one more
- 10:53 time,
- 10:54 let's go back up to the top. Here's what we started with, an image shot right in
- 10:57 the middle of the day.
- 10:58 With some adjustment layers, some blending and another image of a moon,
- 11:01 we now have this: an image that looks like it was shot at night with the moon
- 11:05 poking through the trees.
- 11:06 We've added some lights on the light stands and we've darkened up some of the
- 11:10 areas of the image
- 11:11 to make it look a little bit more realistic. Now, like I said at the
- 11:14 beginning of this video,
- 11:15 every image is going to be different so you may have to take some of the
- 11:18 techniques learned in this video
- 11:20 and tweak them a little bit to work on your images.
Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.