Converting full day to night

[agreen]

I have an full colour image in full daylight of a building against a blue sky, with lots of people, rollercoasters, statues, and pools of water in the foreground (it's a Thai theme park!!!)

I need to take it from daylight, to night, keeping the same content, but adding light sources, reflections etc.

Where do I start? Help needed.

[Greg Gaspard]

If you're looking for plugins to help with this, do a Google search for "Photoshop "day for night"". It's an old cinematographers' trick to use filters to make day look like night. There are a few plugins out there.

[Ken Nielsen •]

In the early days of television, the Perry Mason series used to try to trick the audience into thinking they were doing night shots by cutting down the exposure while they were shooting. You knew what they were trying to do but it did not look real (too many hot spots from the sun, different from moon reflections.)

I don't think just one technique or filter is going to give perfect realism to every area of the photo in one pass.

I think something like you want to do would really be all hand work. I would start by preparing several images that would become starting points for the different areas of the picture. Do one simply inverted, do one with curves adjusted to get a darker look, do others by manipulating replacement colors with darker colors. Prepare some using the filters mentioned above. Do this until you get a palette of open pictures that you can borrow different areas that look correct to assemble into a new image to be your final. I think that it would have to be done with a great deal of personal judgement at work.

You may even want to overlay some of the darker images over the original areas and use transparency adjustment to get the correct look.

Whatever, each time you do a project like this, each image you produce will truly be 'an original creation.'

: )

PS: Want to know what I would really do? I would schedule a night shoot and do it that way.

[Cheesefood]

This is one of those "How do I put This head on this body" questions. Of course someone who was going to perform this task professionally would never think to switch day and night digitally unless they were a master of the process. Even then, the amount of time it would take would probably be equal to the cost of a re-shoot.

Speaking of Day and Night cinema, have you ever seen Plan 9 From Outer Space? After Bela died they spliced in footage of him. Hence, in a night scene, there's a full day-time shot of spliced in.

[LenHewitt]

In the early days of colour cinema, 'night' shots were always done using
artificial (tungsten) light balanced film and grossly underexposing whilst
shooting in daylight.

This not only gave the overall 'dark' feeling with no shadow detail, but
also a blue cast which gave the impression of moonlight. That's the feel to
aim for...

[Ken Nielsen •]

but agreen is talking about a theme park here, which means that he/she must turn on (create) billions of park lights and cast color and shadow for each light with several billion refractions and particles to think of.

This would be a good job for a full studio of people all working overtime for the next 3 months.

I would definitly do a re-shoot at night at much less expense than retouching and greater overall effect to promote realism.

[Cheesefood]

Forgot all about those lights.

I was thinking about how much of a pain it would be to select all of the bits of blue sky between people, concession stands, and the amusement rides.

OK, so we all agree that making a theme park go from day to night is not a good idea, if you're looking for realism.

Now, putting an accused presidential assassin behind a grassy knoll - that's easy.

[Colin Walls]

You don't tell us why you want to do this. That might help with suggestions.

For example, if a monochrome result would be OK, you can do neat things with the channel mixer.

Here is an example: <http://www.drawingwithlight.fsnet.co.uk/images/Chicago%20Ancient%20and%20Modern.jpg>
This was taken at 11:00 on a bright sunny day in Winter. The sky was darkish, due to a polarizer, but most of the "nighttime" effect comes from the conversion to mono.

[Cheesefood]

Colin,

What Chicago buildings are those? I'm staring at my Chicago Points of Interest poster trying to figure it out. The tall one looks like Prudential 2, but I can tell it's not.

Great photo. Very cool angle.

My Chicago Photo Gallery <http://www.wideopenwest.com/~robbo/Chicago%20Web%20Gallery/index.htm>

[Colin Walls]

Robb [Cheese]:

Thanks for your kind comment. This photo is a favourite of mine.

I took this pic 3-4 years ago, on the one day that I have ever spent in Chicago. So, I'm sorry but I can't tell you exactly where it is. There is some major shopping street. I think it's the one with the Hancock building on it? The church was on that street.

I was looking for a pic on the theme "old and new" and the juxtaposition of these buildings seemed just right. I was almost tramped to death by all the pious people coming out of the church. :-) I won the photo comp with it though, so it was worth the risk.

I liked Chicago and hope to return. I may do next month, but don't expect to have much free time. Tony [YrbkMgr] talked about the idea of meeting up in person. Fancy a beer? We'll see.

I enjoyed your pics BTW. Thanks for sharing.

[Cheesefood]

I liked Chicago and hope to return. I may do next month, but don't expect
to have much free time. Tony [YrbkMgr] talked about the idea of meeting
up in person. Fancy a beer? We'll see.




Let me know when, I'll gladly join up for a cold pint. Apparently, Tony and I are neighbors, relatively speaking.

[Nelson K. Liu]

Hi,

I would use adjustment layer-colorized it to bluish-purple cast /
darkness and then use your artistic skill paint on the adjustment
layer to show the lighting effects, after you establish the lighting
sources.

Nelson
Nelson K. Liu
[email]nkl@digirenderings.com[/email]