Hi there, this is Unmesh from PiXimperfect. And today we're going to transform this photo
from flat, boring daylight to dramatic moonlit night with Photoshop. The idea here is very simple. First of all, we're going to create the base
for the nightly atmosphere. Secondly, which is the most important thing,
we're going to paint the light manually. And for this, I would highly recommend using
a Wacom tablet, because that way, it will be extremely helpful for you to have more
accuracy, much more than a mouse. Not only that, you will have the ability to
use pressure sensitivity to control the amount of light just by using the pressure in your
hand, thus allowing you to paint the light more realistically. The one that I am using is the Wacom Intuos
Pro Medium size. And by the way, if you want to learn how to
set up your Wacom tablets, you can watch this video. After the Dodging & Burning, all we need is
a little bit of Color Grading and Overlays to get the effect that we are going for. I'm ready. I hope so are you. So without any further ado, let's get started. Back in the brilliant world of Photoshop and
if you want to go ahead and download this photo and follow along, you already know what
to do, check the links in the description. Let's start by creating the night-light atmosphere
or in other words, Step No. 1 - Creating the Base. Now, you can do this in a lot of ways. One of the most simplest ways I could find
for this one was simply use a Color Lookup Table. Click on the Adjustment layer icon and then
choose Color Lookup, right there. Now, all you need to choose here is, as the
name suggests, NightFromDay. Have a look. Such a nice base, isn't it? Now, I want to remove it a little bit from
the highlights to have some dimension. So double click on the right hand side of
the layer. What will that do? Open up the Layer Styles dialogue box. Now inside of that, what do we need to move? Inside of Blend If, the right slider of the
Underlying Layer. Why? Because we want to remove the bright areas
of the Underlying Layer, or the layer which is beneath it, from the current layer, right. So take the slider from right to left. Now, this is very harsh. Hold the Alt key or the Option key, click
on the slider to break it apart and then take the right half all the way to the right hand
side. I just want to add a slight highlight just
like this, because on top of this, we're going to add one more Color Lookup Table. Hit OK for now. Click on the Adjustment layer icon one more
time and then choose Color Lookup again, and this time again, let's choose NightFromDay. Now have a look. Isn't that fantastic? Now, as we learned when it comes to Adjustment
layers, we can change anything, anytime. So let's go back to the Blend If section of
the previous NightFromDay Colour Lookup, double click on the right hand side of the layer
and we want to change it a little bit. All right, so let's take it a little bit more
to the left hand side, something like this. This looks natural. Once you're satisfied, just hit OK. There you have it. Such a nightly scene. I think maybe we can add some spice to it. And for that, let's create one more Color
Lookup table. Click on the top most layer right here to
add it on the top and then click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose Color Lookup again. And this time let's add a tinge of sunset
to it - LateSunset. That looks nice. However, it's kind of too much. Let's decrease it to about, let's say, how
about 30%? Here's the Before, here's the After. I like that color. Now if you look closely at the grass, you
will see that the elephant does look like it's walking at the night, the sky is a little
nightly, but the grass needs a little bit of modification. It needs a change in color. So, I don't want to change the color from
the top, but from the very beginning, so we need to add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer
just above the Background layer. So first of all, make sure that the Background
layer is selected and then click on the Adjustment layer icon and this time again, choose Hue/Saturation? What is the original color of the grass? Yellows, right? So we need to choose Yellows from the drop
down, right there. And we can expand the range that it's selecting. And now, let's change the hue and saturation. Let's play with it. See, if we take the hue to the left, it makes
more sense. So I'm going to set the hue to about minus
47 / minus 49. That looks okay. But, it's too colorful and the color looks
so inconsistent. What do we do? Double click on the symbol of the Hue/Saturation
Adjustment layer and simply decrease the Saturation. But, we made changes in the hue, right? What happened to it? We made changes in the Yellows, not in the
Master. So we need to get back to Yellows. Click on the drop down and choose the Yellows
and simply decrease the Saturation. I'm going to set it to about minus 65/ minus
66. Let's see how that looks. Now, that looks like something. Now there you go. As you can see, a nice base is ready. All we need to do for organization purposes,
is group every Adjustment layer that creates the base into base. So select the Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer,
hold the Shift key, select the top most Adjustment layer and then press Ctrl or Command + G This
is now a group. Double click on the text and let's name it
Base. Now we seem to have a pretty decent starting
point, but again, it still looks flat, right? This brings us to Step No. 2, which is Paint
the Light. So first off comes the highlights and for
the highlights, let's go ahead and create a Curves Adjustment layer, as usual. Click on the Adjustment layer icon and then
choose Curves. Now inside of the Curves, all we need to do
is to click on the middle, create a point in the middle, and then take it up so high
just like this. Once you're happy with this, of course, you
won't be happy with this anyway, but once it's bright, you can click on the Mask, press
Ctrl or Command + I. This will invert the mask. Now you can take the brush. Now, this is very crucial. Let's pay attention. We need to make sure that we are using the
Soft Round Brush and once we have selected that, we need to change the Flow to Pen Pressure
if you're using a Wacom tablet. That will allow you to control the intensity
of the brush with just the pressure of your hand. So, all we have to do is to go to Window and
then Brush Settings. Now, inside of this, let's go ahead and check
Transfer. Now select Transfer to change the settings
and let's set the Opacity to Off. I don't want Opacity Control I just want Flow
Control. And set the Flow to Pen Pressure. If you want to have more control over the
intensity, you can also set the Opacity. That's totally upon you. I'm going to show it to you anyway. You can also set both, the Flow and the Opacity,
to Pen Pressure so that you can control both with just the Pen Pressure and set the Minimum
to Zero, so that you can have zero opacity and zero flow when you're pressing very, very,
extremely light. Alright, that's fine. Once you have set it to those numbers, all
you have to do is to make sure that inside of the Brush Tip Shape, the Hardness is at
Zero. And before you begin to paint, if you are
using a Wacom tablet, I would highly recommend to set the flow at about 5% to 10%. If you're not using a Wacom tablet and doing
it with the mouse, it's going to take you a while, but you can set the Flow for a mouse
from 1% to 2%. You will be able to have a little control,
but that way if you're doing it with the mouse, it's going to take you a lot longer. If you're using it with a Wacom, you can set
the flow to as high as 10 and just paint lightly or softly on areas where you need less light. On areas where you need more light, just press
harder. That's it. So I'm going to set my flow to about 5% if
you want to be extremely careful. If you're doing it fast, you can set it to
10%. Now, let's go ahead and zoom it in and start
painting according to the direction of light. So, for this example, let's assume that the
light is coming from the top, a little bit slanted. So I'm going to show you the direction of
light. So for a moment, let's set it to this. So light is going to come through this direction. And this is just for demonstration. All right? And according to it, we're going to paint
on the elephant. Let's go ahead and delete this. This was just for demonstration. Make sure the mask is selected, Flow - I'm
going to set it to about 5%. Now let's go ahead and zoom it in and paint
accordingly. And by the way, just a quick little tip, I
have set the brush size to be controlled by W and E. So when I press W, the brush becomes
smaller, when I press E the brush becomes harder. That way, I don't have to completely move
my hand to the bracket keys and then change the brush size and move the hand to this side
because this side you have the Ctrl, At, Shift and all those other controls. So you can do that too. If you don't know how to do it, you can always
check out this video that I had done previously on setting up your tablet and keyboard. All right, anyway. So, let's decrease the brush size a little
bit and start painting. Also, make sure that your Foreground color
is White. And if you're having difficulty painting in
a certain direction, you can always hold the 'R' key, just hold it, rotate it and then
when you release the 'R' key, it will get back to the brush. If it doesn't get back to the brush, you can
select the brush back again. If you want to reset it, you can hold the
'R' key again and then click on Reset View and then release the 'R' key. It will get you back to the brush. I'm going to speed up this process because
this can get pretty monotonous. Now, once we have done the highlights, similarly,
we will do the shadows. So click on the Adjustment layer icon again
and this time again, choose Curves and take it down. Click in the middle, take it down. Once it is dark enough, click on the Mask,
press Ctrl or Command + I and similarly let's start painting on the dark areas with the
brush, White as the foreground color, Flow at 5% and all the same settings for the brush
as we had for the highlights. Let us name these two curves Adjustment layers
respectively - this one was for the Shadows and this one is Highlights. Just for organisation. After finishing up the highlights and shadows,
it does look pretty amazing, doesn't it? However, I think there has to be a little
bit more brightness in the ground as well. So, we can add a little more highlights by
creating one more Curves Adjustment layer and then just brighten it up a little bit. And then, select the mask, press Ctrl or Command
+ I. Now, take the brush, Flow can be 5%, increase
the Brush Size and then maybe you can do a couple of strokes on the ground just here
and there. Let's have a look here. Here's the Before, here's the After. Just a little bit of, you know, Brightening. Now it looks better. But still, the overall image is pretty dark. We need to increase the whites. Also, we can do this with one more Curves. So click on the Adjustment layer icon and
then choose Curves again. And this time, take this slider from the right
to the left. You can take it to the point where the mountain
just begins. Yeah, that looks cool. It looks too bright, but that's fine. We can control that later. This is fine. All right. Now beneath it, we can add some darkness. Let's create one more Curves Adjustment layer
just below it, click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose Curves. And we're going to click on the middle and
drag it down. That way we are still keeping the extremely
bright areas bright and just lowering down the midterms, like that. All right, now, we can spare the elephant
right here by selecting the mask and then taking the brush, Black as the Foreground
color and then just dab above the elephant. You can also increase the Flow and turn off
Pressure Sensitivity, or you can just select Soft Round again. It will set it to default. So I'm going to click on the elephant just
like this. And now erase the extras. By the way, you can always decrease the Opacity,
but this time, we need to decrease the opacity of the mask, we need to just decrease the
Mask Density. So make sure that the Mask is selected and
then go to Window and then make sure Properties is selected. And then, all we have to do is to click on
right there and decrease the density of the mask, slowly and gradually increase it to
the point where you like it. So I'm gonna leave it at about 56 / 57. What about 55? Let's keep it at that and we are good to go. Now with every light comes the shadow. So we need to definitely create a very soft
shadow for the elephant. So let's create one more Curves Adjustment
layer, and this time we're going to take it down, just like that. One more time. Now, inside of the mask, press Ctrl or Command
+ I. It turns it black. Now let's take the brush. This is a very simple shadow. So we're going to take a Soft Round Brush,
make it larger, make sure that the Foreground color is White and just dab in the middle,
very middle. Have a look at the Mask. It is just a circle. Soft circle, right? Now press Ctrl or Command + T and just flatten
it and place it beneath the elephant. You can make it wider if you want to. I'm going to keep it that way. And there you are, just a soft shadow. Also, we want to remove the shadows from some
areas. Make sure the mask is selected. Take the brush, Black as the foreground color
and then just erase it from these areas. Alrighty. Now you can of course decrease the Opacity
of this one. I would keep it at about 40-ish. Now once we are done with all of these highlights
and shadows, it's always great to group it up to keep it organized. So, select the first Adjustment layer ight
there, hold the Shift key, select the last one that deals with highlights and shadows. All of them are now selected, press Ctrl or
Command + G and just rename it to Lights. Simple. So now, most of the heavy lifting is done. All we have to do is Step No. 3 - Color Grading
and Overlays. Let's start by adding an Overlay right here
at the top. Because the elephant is too bright, there
has to be a light source, right? Which is, of course, in this case, the moon. So we're going to add the glare of the moon. So click on the Adjustment layer icon and
this time let's go ahead and choose the Gradient. So click on the Gradient, choose a Gradient
which is Foreground to Transparent, or any color to Transparent; we are going to change
that later. So left hand side let's make sure that the
color is White. So click on the color, make sure it is White,
hit OK. At the top slider, once you click on the top
slider, it should be at Opacity 100. On the right hand side top slider, the Opacity
should be Zero and the color can be Blue. Select the bottom slider for the color and
we're going to choose a Bluish color for this one to go with the scene, or you can just
take a sample from here as well and then modify that. Once you are happy with this, hit OK, hit
OK again and change the style from Linear to Radial. Now here's the great part, you can actually
move it anywhere you want. Isn't that crazy? So now, I'm going to change the scale, I'm
going to increase the scale so that the circle is larger. We're going to choose a very high scale. What about 350? It is huge, I know, but you can move it up. Something like this, or I'm going to just
decrease. Something like this makes sense. Hit OK. Now to add a little more drama to it, let's
go ahead and add a Curves Adjustment layer with the same amount of brightening at the
top as in the elephant. So, we're going to click on the Adjustment
layer icon and then choose Curves and take it up just like that. This looks fine. Now click on the Mask and then select the
Gradient. And this time choose a Gradient from Black
to White. And then, let's draw a Gradient from Black
to White, bottom to top, something like this. Yeah, that looks nice. Have a look. Here's the Before, here's the After. Creates that nice mood for the scene. Now, I think it's time to do a little bit
of Color Grading on the scene. You don't have to work so hard or do something
so manual. Just apply a Color Lookup table. Click on the Adjustment layer icon and then
choose Color Lookup. And the one we're going to use here is HorrorBlue,
because it's blue, so why not try it. There. And have a look at the scene. Isn't that quite amazing? So I'm going to go ahead and decrease the
Opacity because, of course, this is too much. So we're going to set it to about 55 / 54. That looks fine. You can also go crazy and increase it even
more for a more moody kind of look. This is even better. Now I'm gonna use a super dramatic Mist Brush
that I downloaded from Envato Elements. Let me show that to you. Have a look right here - Hundred Mist Photoshop
Stamp Brushes. Now if you're already a member, you can download
all of these brushes at no extra cost as well. However, if you're looking for free alternative,
you can always go to brusheasy.com. They have a lot of Fog brushes as well. But if you're looking for good quality stuff,
they always come at a premium. And if you look at all the stock websites,
I prefer Envato Elements because of unlimited downloads of everything from images to stock
videos to graphics to even Photoshop actions and brushes, even 3D models. They have got crazy stuff. I'm actually a paying member. If you want the link to the brushes and some
of my favorite actions, you can go ahead and check them out in the description. So I'm going to go ahead and choose the brush. I think I'm going to go with 117. This looks nice. But this brush is a little smaller. What do we do? Just make it a little bigger. This is fog anyway. So I'm going to make it this big and create
a brand new layer at the top and let's go ahead and choose the Foreground color as White. It's already white. So now we're going to just dab, make sure
that the Opacity and Flow are at hundred, Blend Mode is Normal. Alright, just dab in right there. Wow, isn't that fantastic? You can always go ahead and just try a second
time from the very bottom. See what looks good to you. You can just apply it from here or you can
try it from there. That's totally upon you. I'm gonna leave it at that. Maybe I'm going to try it even lower, just
like this. That looks good. But there's a problem, the smoke color is
looking different. It should be something of this color, right? So how do we change the color to that color? Simple. Create a Solid Color Adjustment layer by clicking
on the Adjustment Layer icon, choose Solid Color. And doesn't matter what color that is right
now, hit OK. And then hold the Alt key or the Option key,
click on the line between these two layers. This creates a Clipping Mask. Now you can change this color by double clicking
on the symbol of the Adjustment layer and then pick this color. Simple, isn't it? And you can just adjust it accordingly. See what suits best for you. Maybe make it a little desaturated. Once you're happy with this, hit OK. Done. So here's the Before, here's the After. You can also decrease the Opacity of this
color if you want it to have less color. So for me, I think I'm going to keep the Opacity
to about 90. That looks good to me. Now to add even more drama to this image,
let's create one more Curves Adjustment Layer. I know it's a lot of curves. Click on the Adjustment layer icon and then
choose Curves. I'm going to take it up again one more time. This time, let's create a little contrast,
something like this. Now, select the mask, press Ctrl or Command
+ I. I'm going to take a huge brush, take the brush, a very huge brush, zoom out and
we're going to choose a regular soft round brush and then just dab with white right there. Look at the drama. I know it's kind of too much, we're going
to decrease the opacity. Just gradually increase it to about 54. Or maybe let's go for 58. There you have it. Interesting, isn't it. Now after that, you can of course apply as
many overlays as you want. But that's it for me. Maybe I'm going to make changes later. And this, my friend, is the final result. And do not forget, for organization purposes,
let's group them all out. Select the first Adjustment layer, select
the last Adjustment layer that had to do with overlays by holding the Shift key and clicking
on it. And then press Ctrl or Command + G, and let's
name this Overlays and Color Grading, whatever you want to name it. I'm just typing random stuff. Doesn't matter. So that's how you change a flat, boring day
too dramatic, moonlit night in Photoshop. All you have to do is to remember three basic
steps. Step number 1 - Create that Base. No matter what type of scene you are creating. First you have to create that ground base
on which you're going to build upon. So in this case, we just simply used some
Color Lookup tables to create that night base. On top of that, we painted the highlights
and shadows using Curves Adjustment layers and Masking. It's very preferable that you have a Wacom
tablet so that you can control the light properly. And after that, all we had to do is to apply
some Overlays and do some Color Grading. And also, to add some mist we used some brushes
using Envato Elements. You can also use Brusheasy if you're looking
for free alternatives. And at the end, it's up to you as to how many
Overlays or Gradients you want to add. So that's pretty much it for this video. I hope this video helped you and if it did,
make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe,
ring the bell so that you, my friend, don't miss any other future tips, tricks or tutorials. I would like to take this moment to thank
all these nice and amazing people for supporting this channel on Patreon and helping keep PiXimperfect
free for everybody forever. Thanks so much for all the support. Thank you for watching. I'll see you guys again in my next one till
then stay tuned. I don't know what's happening to me. Till then stay tuned and make sure that you
keep creating.
