Photoshop How To

A while back we featured a powerful Photoshop tutorial explaining how to turn daytime photos into night scenes with three simple tips. In the video below, you‘ll see how to do the opposite, by making nighttime photos appear to have been captured at dawn.

“Day for Night” is a popular cinematic technique, used in the famous Truffaut film of the same name. Here, astrophotography expert “Milky Way Mike” walks you through the less familiar “Night for Day” Photoshop technique.

Mike’s approach involves stacking multiple photos with different exposures to arrive at a final image with clean shadow detail and a properly lit foreground. As you’ll see, each of his shots involves long exposures of two or three minutes.

While this Photoshop stacking technique may sound complicated, it’s actually quite easy to accomplish, and Mike demonstrates each step of the process. He also explains how to create an artificial light ray emanating from the lighthouse he photographed on the Portland coast, and give it a natural look.

Mike illustrates a few more steps for balancing the exposure, fine-tuning colors, and reducing noise in the shadows to arrive at his final image. This approach can be used with a variety of outdoor scenes, so check out the video and give it a try.

There are more helpful tips on the Milky Way Mike YouTube channel. And be sure to check out our earlier tutorial explaining the Day for Night Photoshop technique.