How to Turn Day Into Night in a Photo Using Photoshop

In this 8 minute image manipulation tutorial, Colin Smith of photoshopCAFE utilises the little-used Lighting Effects filter in Photoshop to completely re-light a scene.

Smith completely reinvents a daytime scene by compositing in street lamps and then using the Lighting Effects filter (found under Filter>Render) to turn them on.

Lighting Effects allows you to create virtual light sources in your image, with full control over the size and angle, fall-off, color, and background ambiance.

To change the coloring of the sky behind the brick wall in his image, Smith uses another little-known Photoshop feature. The Color Lookup adjustment layer allows you to apply LUTs to your image; a concept you’ll be familiar with if you’ve done any video grading. Smith uses the ‘Moonlight’ 3DLUT file to mimic a moonlit night sky.

There are many ways to skin a cat with Photoshop, but this walkthrough will hopefully expose a few techniques new to you. If you enjoyed the short tutorial, check out photoshopCAFE on YouTube for more.