Why, hello there. I am so happy to meet you!

In this tutorial, I’m going to take this image:



and use lighting and color to try to set mood and end up with this:



This tutorial was made with Paintshop Pro 7, and I’ve only used Photoshop for a few seconds, but I’m sure photoshoppers will be able to figure out what I’m talking about.

Of course everything in this tutorial can be done more then one way, but the way I’m showing you is one of the quickest and easiest ways I could figure to do it. On to the tutorial!

This is basically a B2B Day to Night image, so first things first, we’re going to make it look like it takes place at night. First, duplicate the layer. This is going to end up being a Highlight Removal Layer. Right click on a layer in the layer pallette and choose Duplicate:



One of the most obvious indications that this was taken during the day are the sharp contrast of shadows, so we’re going to remove those first. This new layer we duplicated is what we’re going to use for this, so call it something clever like “Highlight Removal.”

Next, we need to make the new layer shades of grey (but not the entire image) so go to Colors -> Colorize.



Use the settings shown. Hue: 0 and Saturation 0

Okay, the reason this layer is greyscale is that it’s going to be used as a mask, of sorts. It could be color, but then we’d have to do a few other things to make it work.

Select the Highlight/Midtone/Shadow filter by going to Colors>Adjust>Highlight/Midtone/Shadow.



Set everything as you see it. Shadow -100, Midtone-100, Highlight 0. Also make sure Dynamic Adjustment method is set, or this is not going to work at ALL.

Oh, and a note. If you don’t understand Hilight/Midtone/Shadows you should read the help file or a tutorial on it, because it could be a little confusing. Suffice to say that it basically selects ranges of light values and either darkens or lightens them according to what you’ve entered. We’ve told it to darken the darkest values to black, and to also darken the middle values to black. What we’re left with is the highlights.

Set the layer to Difference mode. It should look like this:



This doesn’t always work perfectly, and may take some fiddling around with, or slight blurring, but for this pic, it does.

Next, we’re going to apply a couple of real easy effects real quick-like.

First, to make it look like it’s night time, an effect that can be achieved by setting the entire image to be a cool color, such as blue. Create a new layer and make it blue, and set the blend mode to Hue.

Second, we’re going to darken everything a bit. Right click on the create new layer button, select New Adjustment Layer, and choose Brightness/Contrast. Set Brightness to -45.

This next step I’m going to breeze through because it’s repetitive and extremely simple. I cut the fairies out of their background (tutorials for this are all over) and made them appear to glow. I am ashamed to say this, but I used an Eye Candy 3.1 filter; Glow. I actually suggest that you avoid using filters if at all possible, so you might want to try to airbrush the glow around the fairies in a new layer, Gaussian blur it, and mess around with it till you like how it looks.

After this, just place the fairies where you want and resize them so that they appear to be closer or further from the camera then each other.



Okay, we’re almost there!

This next part is the pay off for using the weird methods of removing highlights and the Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer.

First things first, go to the Removing Highlights layer we had earlier. Create a mask (there are many tutorials on this, and it would take far too long to explain it, but if you don’t know how to use masks, just use the eraser tool).



It should look like that. It’s a giant mess, but as long as it looks right in the real pic it should be fine. I’ll show you a close up of the effect you’re going for:



See, you’re basically removing a layer that was used to remove highlights. You’re selectively reapplying highlights to make it appear as if the fairy is lighting the leaves, and not the sun. This is super fast and easy, and looks pretty damn good for the lack of effort it takes compared to using dodge or burn.

The next part is basically exactly the same as the last part. Go to the Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and erase sections of it to further light up areas where the fairies are. Masking doesn’t seem to work on adjustment layers, I suppose because the layers are masks themselves. This is more subtle then the last step.

Now we’re gonna add some glare off the water, just because I like the way it looks. Draw some horizontal lines in a new layer that look a bit like the following:



Gaussian and motion blur it, and set the layer to Dodge. We’re going for this kind of effect:

Now’s the step I spend forever on, and I think is important for all pictures. Screw around with it and add as many details as you want until you get bored. Heh. I added some trails to the fairies (I Gaussian blurred an airbrush trail I drew), gave the fairy with her feet in the pond’s feet a different sort of effect to make it look like they were under water, darkened shadows where I felt they needed to be darkened and ended up with this: