Changing the time of day
Day to night
Before starting on this type of transformation it helps to understand the inherent visual qualities that characterize the type of scene we desire – whether it’s a late afternoon, early evening, or moonlit night effect.
When deciding on a suitable subject to convert to a night scene, consider whether the shadows in the original scene will be sympathetic to the mood of the image you want to create. If they are, it will make the job far easier.
In this project we will change a normal daytime scene into a moonlit one and add other visual clues such as street lighting.
1. Since we are simulating a night scene lit by a full moon, objects in the final picture will need fairly strong, sharp shadows. To facilitate the desired result I have chosen a picture of a subject that is lit by strong directional sunlight to provide good shadows.
2. Since the original subject was photographed with significant convergence, the first step is to use the Transform > Perspective tool to reduce the distortion.
It is also necessary to extend the foreground grass by increasing the canvas size a little and using the Clone tool to fill the new space with grass. This raises the horizon line, making a better composition. The picture is now ready to be converted into a night scene.
3. One way of working on a complex project is to make new layers of the main picture and use selections with layer masks to isolate the important parts of the image. Make the background layer into a normal layer by double-clicking on it, and name it. Now drag it to the Create a new layer button to make a copy, and rename this new layer.
Next, to make the sky and buildings independent of each other, create a selection of the buildings and use it to add layer masks to each layer. Note in the Layers palette how the layer masks are opposites of each other – one for the sky and the other for the buildings. These are created from the same selection, which is inverted as needed.
4. Since the ability of the human eye to see in colour is reduced at night, remove the colour from the sky layer using the Desaturate command. Using the selection from the “Sky” layer mask (Ctrl [Cmd] + Click on the mask) to restrict the effect, add a Curves adjustment layer above the “Sky” layer and adjust the curve to make the sky tones darker, producing a dramatic night sky effect.
5. To make the colour in the foreground look muted, add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and reduce the Saturation slider to -60. A Curves adjustment layer is also used on the foreground layer to increase the contrast and darken the scene. Both these adjustment layers are restricted using the selection created by Ctrl (Cmd) + clicking the building’s layer mask.
6. Now we’ll work on the sky. Place an image of the full moon on a new layer above the other layers and adjust the contrast to make it look bright. Create a glow around the moon to simulate the flare you perceive when looking at a full moon. Use the Outer Glow layer style for full control of the glow effect.
7. For the stars, make a new layer filled with black and apply the Noise filter set to 20 per cent. Blur the Noise by one pixel using Gaussian Blur and increase the contrast using Levels. Repeat this sequence of blurring and contrast increase several times to reduce the number of stars, then selectively erase those stars you don’t need. Reduce the opacity of the star layer to control their brightness.
8. The windmill is lit up at night, so we can recreate this look using the Lighting Effects filter. Although you can apply several lights at the same time using this filter, I chose to apply one light effect at a time on two separate layers of the windmill for greater control. The effect of the lighting filter was restricted by making a selection of just the windmill walls. The Lighting Effects filter dialog box shown above is for the left spotlight.
9. Here we see the completed floodlighting on the windmill and simulated light from the street lamp at right. The street lamp light is created using feathered oval selections filled with a suitable colour. Erase any unwanted colour from the lamp light at the edges of the building.
10. To make the floodlighting more apparent we can add a cone of light for each light source. Create a new layer, then use the Polygonal Lasso tool to draw a cone shape emanating from the left floodlight.
11. Now use the Gradient tool with a white to transparent linear gradient to fill the cone selection, starting at the floodlight. Press Ctrl (Cmd) + D to deselect the cone and apply a little Gaussian Blur to soften the edges of the beam.
To merge the beam into the scene, change the layer blend mode to Screen and reduce the Opacity to 20 per cent. Now repeat this process on new layers for the right floodlight and the street lamp on the right side.
12. As a final touch, apply a Hue/ Saturation adjustment layer, with the Colorize option ticked, above the “Sky” layer to add a little silvery-blue colour to the sky area. Use the sky selection to restrict the colour. The screengrab of the layers palette shows the final order of the layers for this image.
Tutorial by Les Meehan, DIGIT magazine © IDG 2006
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