Turn Day to Night

Quick reference

• 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.

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