Day To Night
Whoever said taking a photograph at 2 in the afternoon under a pale blue sky was a bad idea? Okay, maybe I have said that a couple times. However, that is until I got a little creative with some daytime long exposure and some nighttime post processing!
It is possible to turn a daytime photo into a night time work of art. The image you see above was taken at about 12 in the afternoon with a horrible midday son with absolutely zero cloud cover. I put 16 stops of ND Filters on the front of the lens and worked with what I had. I thought about how wonderful this site must be at night, but because of my schedule, there was no way of being there. So I got a little creative and turned the son off and the lighthouse on in Photoshop.
In this course, you will see how easy it is to transform a daytime sky into a nighttime paradise! The workflow for the course is broken down into specific segments. We will cover the basic nighttime effect and elaborate on it with stock photos and techniques to create mood and atmosphere in the scene.
What you will learn in this course:
- How to make a basic day to night look (with an Action provided in the course)
- How to recover color and detail from the beginning photo
- How to composite stars into the night sky
- Creating the night time mood and atmosphere with dodging and burning and curves layers
- How to create custom star-shaped brushes to “Turn the Lights On” in the scene.
Lessons
Lesson 1: Day To Night Introduction
Lesson 2 The Night Action
The Day to Night Action In Lesson 2 we will look at how to get the day to night look on our photographs. For this lesson, we will be using the supplied Day To Night Action and the example image for the demonstration. While the action is very helpful as a starting point, keep in […]
Lesson 3 Bringing the Color Back
Adding Color One of the most important features we will lose when we use the Day To Night action is the color in the beginning image. The Day To Night Action creates a black and blue image where our darkest darks are told to become solid black and our highlights become a pale dark […]
Lesson 4 Pexels and Stars
Stars from Stock I usually shoot my own stock Photos. For a long time, that is how I used my camera. I would be working on a composite and need a gnarly tree for the foreground. I would drive all around California looking for just the right tree, shoot it, then composite it into […]
Lesson 5 Setting the Mood
Setting the mood of the scene Usually, a little bit of Marvin Gaye will set the mood, “I’ve been really trying baby, tryin’ to hold back this feeling for so long”… Wait, we are talking about day to night images here. Of course, you are free to listen to whatever you like to set […]
Lesson 6 Turning the Lights On
The Final Touch No Lighthouse would be right at night without some light (say that10 times fast, I dare you)! In this lesson we will create a pointed star brush using the pen tool, set it as a brush preset, and use it to light up the scene in our photo. This lesson […]
Lesson 7 Day to Night Conclusion
All good things must come to an end In the last and final lesson, we will do a quick recap of all of the work we have done to create this beautiful day to night photograph. The final step to all of my composite work, I run through each layer or layer group and […]