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Changing the Time of Day Copyright 2003 - JMA - All Rights Reserved

The time of day that you decide to take a picture is as important as the picture itself because it will determine the mood of your final image. Photographs taken early in the morning or late in the day long shadows and warm light and they are the ideal times for landscape and scenic photography. Another great time for pictures is at night, when the moon is full. Pictures of dark streets and alleyways taken during the night give an eerie feeling of suspense and drama, almost as if someone is lurking in the shadows. Light is what gives life to photographs, and capturing the exact moment when the light is right requires a lot of planning and a lot more patience. Unfortunately, when you're on vaction, the day is full of activities and more often than not, you just don't have the time to set up your camera and wait for that special moment. So what can we do? Well, with a little practice and a little Paint Shop Pro, we can apply a few tricks and achieve the same results. For example, let's say that you want to photograph a scenic but the light is not dramatic enough because it's midday. Well, think about what the scene might look like in the evening or at night and angle your shot to include key elements such as dramatic clouds and street lights. These objects will lend themselves well when creating night moods. Waterways, streams, or even puddles of water in the street can be effectively manipulated to add reflections and a feeling of depth to the image.

Figure 1. Previewing the Raw Image The image of this Venetian waterway was shot at about 11AM. Notice how the brilliant light from the midday sun has lit the entire scene. There appears to be a lot of detail but overall, the image lacks mood, which is typical of photographs taken under a midday sun. However, the image has all the necessary elements that will play a key role in the transition from day to night. These are the clouds, the water and the street lights.

Figure 2. Making the Sky Selection The first selection made was the sky area, and since the colors in the sky and clouds are nearly the same, the quickest way to make the selection was with the Magic Wand with the Match mode set to RGB and the Tolerance set to 20. The Magic wand was placed in the sky area, moved and clicked 2 or 3 times until the entire sky was selected. The selection is then saved to disk using Selections > Load / Save Selection > Save Selection to disk.

Figure 5. Adding Contrast to the Waterway To bring out the details and the reflections in the water we need to apply a contrast filter, but before we do we must isolate the waterway from the rest of the image. To do that, we make a selection of the water using the Lasso tool and trace around the edges as shown. Once the selection is made, we can apply the contrast filter using the Auto Contrast Adjustment feature in PSP. On the Photo tool bar select Enhance Photo > Auto Contrast Enhancement. In the Auto Contrast dialog window set the Bias to Darkest, the Strength to Normal and the Appearance to Bold.

Figure 3. Darkening the SKy With the sky selection in place, the sky was darkened using the Curves adjustment tool. The Curve adjustment tool is selected by clicking Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Curves. When the dialog box appears it is important that the seetings are at the default values. To do this we can click the Reset button icon located at the top right hand corner of the dialog window. This is the icon that looks like a curved arrow. After resetting the values to zero, click and drag the line at the center of the graph down at a 45 degree angle, to create a night sky that appears to be lit by the moon.

Figure 4. Darkening the Building and the Water We can now apply the curves command to the lower half of the image to darken the buildings and the water. With the original sky selection in place invert the selection using Selections > Invert command on the Main Menu bar. Then apply the Curves command using Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Curves.

In the dialog window the line at the center of the graph was dragged down and to the left at about a 45 degree angle unitl the input value reached 160.

Figure 6. Creating Moonlight in the Sky To create the appearance of moonlight in the sky, we need to add some dark color to the bright clouds. The sky selection that was saved to disk earlier in Figure 2,  is loaded back onto the image. Then using the Paint Brush tool with a brush size of 150 and the Opacity set to 20, the sky area was painted with a pure Black color.

Figure 7. The Shadows Below Now that the sky is darkened, we can apply the same technique to the buildings and sidewalks below. With the sky selection in place, we can use the Selections > Invert command to have PSP select the complement of the scene. Then using the Paint Brush tool, this time with the  Opacity set to 45, the selected area was painted as shown.

Figure 8. Turning On The Lights Adding accents to the street adds to the illusion of night. Illuminating the lights can be done rather quickly with the Sunburst effect filter. The filter is activated by selecting Effects > Illumination Effects > Sunburst off the Main Menu bar. In the dialog window the crosshair curso was first placed in the center of the frontmost street light and then re-applied to the second street light in the rear. The density and brightness of the of the Light Spot and the Rays were kept at a minimum as shown.

Figure 9. Shaping the Light Fall Paying attention to detail is an important part of image manipulaiton. The street lights would normally shed light onto the sidewalk and the walter and we need to add this illusion to the image to give it that touch of realism. We first make the selection in the shape shown on the right, then the selection is Feathered by 10 pixels, and finally the Curves command is used to lighten the selected area. The same procedure is used for the street light in the back.

Figure 10. Adding Final Touches In the final image we added some stars in the upper left hand side of the image and the moon in the upper right corner near the building. You can also select some of the windows and fill them with a white-Yellow color to give the appearnce of the apartment being occupied.