Photoshop How To

“Day for Night” is a cinematic technique popularized in Francois Truffaut's classic 1973 film by the same name. The idea is to shoot during the day to create imagery that looks like it was captured after dark. In the Photoshop tutorial below you’ll learn how to do the same thing with still photos.

Image-editing instructor Colin Smith begins by creating a duplicate of his original color image and opening Photoshop’s Render menu. He notes that this technique only works with RGB files, so if you’re editing a CMYK image be sure to change the mode to RGB.

Smith then demonstrates a number of methods for adjusting street lamps in his scene, changing their shape, intensity, color and orientation. The next step is dialing back the exposure of the sky and cleaning things up a bit.

All that’s left is to add a pretty model to the foreground, and the result is a really nice “nighttime” photograph. You can find more helpful tips on the photoCAFE YouTube channel, and be sure to look at our earlier tutorial on taking great outdoor photos at night.

In an entirely different vein, here's our story on Colin Smith's 10 drone photography tips to take your imagery to new heights.