Turn Day Into Night

Convert a bright daylight photo into a moody nighttime scene.

Dave Johnson

I want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about Digital Focus to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com. And be sure to sign up to have the Digital Focus Newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

Feature: Turn Day Into Night

We can't always take pictures at exactly the right time. I have countless photos ("location" shots, for instance) that would have looked wonderful at a different time of day. But due to circumstances, I was forced to take them when it was convenient for me, the bus driver, or the local tour guide. Consider a picture of a lighthouse positioned a few miles off the coast of Cuba.

I would have loved to capture a picture at dusk, just as the sun was setting and the lighthouse was firing its spotlight. Two things kept me from realizing that goal. First, our boat was passing through around noon. Second, I was about twenty years too late. The lighthouse had long been abandoned and was unlikely to do anything that its resident ghosts weren't capable of handling.

I decided to create the picture I saw in my mind with Jasc Paint Shop Pro. Save the lighthouse picture to your hard drive so that you can follow along.

Swap Out the Sky

Our road to converting this daylight photo of a derelict lighthouse into a nighttime photo of a brightly lit beacon to maritime traffic begins as it does with many image editing projects: swapping out the bland, lifeless sky. A few clouds will add some character to the picture and give us the opportunity for some real contrast. Save my sky picture so that you can work with it.

Start by selecting the sky in the original lighthouse photo. Click the Magic Wand tool in Paint Shop Pro's tool palette. (It lives in the fifth cubby from the top with some other selection tools.) Look in the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen; if you don't see it, you can turn in on by choosing View, Palettes, Tool Options. Make sure that the Magic Wand's tolerance is set to about 40 and the feather is zero. Then click in the sky; it should all be selected with just one or two clicks. If you don't get the entire sky in one click, hold down the Shift key and click again on the part of the sky that the Magic Wand missed the first time. Since we'll be converting to an evening sky, don't worry if small edge details get selected.

Open the substitute sky in Paint Shop Pro and immediately choose Edit, Copy from the menu. You can then close the file--we don't need it anymore--and make sure the lighthouse picture is selected again. Choose Edit, Paste, Paste Into Selection. You'll agree, I hope, that the new picture is an improvement.

Darken the Scene

Now it's time to turn this daylight scene into night. Choose Adjust, Brightness and Contrast, Curves from the menu. Click the curve and drag it down until the sky is a deep, rich, dark blue--the sort of color you see in the first hour or so after dusk. Remember that you're shooting for something artistic that satisfies your own eyes. My editors had trouble perfectly duplicating the specific colors in my image, but they got close enough to make themselves happy.

Since the sky is still selected, this change won't affect the lighthouse.

After you click OK, you'll see the change in your picture. If you think it's too light or dark, just open the Curve tool and try again. When you're happy with the sky, choose Selections, Invert from the menu to change the selection to the water and the lighthouse. Now open the Curves tool a second time and darken it again, but don't make it quite as dark as the sky. We're almost done.

Before you go on to the next step, get rid of the selection by choosing Selections, Select None.

Let There Be Light

Finally, it's time to add some light to the lighthouse using a bit of digital magic. Most image editors have some sort of illumination tool; in Paint Shop Pro, choose Effects, Illumination Effects, Sunburst. This tool lets you add a burst of light anywhere in the picture.

Start by dragging the sunburst directly over the top of the lighthouse (use the crosshair in the preview on the left of the dialog box). From here, it's all a matter of personal taste. To pick a color, click in the box next to Color. I set the color of the light to a pale yellow and dropped the brightness of the burst to 10. I gave the rays a low density (25) and dropped their brightness to just 5--making them very nearly invisible. Finally, I set the circle brightness to 40--this controls the intensity of the simulated lens flare.

And that's all there is to turning day into night.

Dave's Favorites: Make Photo Key Chains With Pixifun

The first time my 11-year-old daughter saw them, she flipped. And I'll tell you the truth: While I usually have my finger on the pulse of the 11-to-13-year-old Johnson household demographic, I grossly underestimated the enthusiasm that my near-teen would have for making her own photo key rings.

Pixifun makes key ring production a snap; the Photo Key Ring Kit includes six photo frames with attached key rings, perforated photo paper, print test sheets, and software. I turned my daughter loose with the package, and a few hours later she'd made a couple of key rings that featured pictures of her favorite cat, Muff.

The results are great, as long as you keep your expectations in check. The frames themselves are about 1.5 inches square and made of a clear plastic that scratches rather easily--so after a little day-to-day use, the pictures within start to look a bit weathered.

The software is serviceable, but younger kids may need help importing and cropping pictures, then adding backgrounds, shapes, and text. But if your youngsters, like my daughter, have a little computer savvy, they'll probably be cranking out key rings faster than you can say, "Guess what your kids will give you for your next birthday?"

The Pixifun Photo Key Ring Kit costs just $13 and is available from the Pixifun site. While you're there, you can check out some of Pixifun's other goodies, like magnets, ID badges, and sticker photo kits. There's something there for any kid who loves digital picture projects.

Q&A: Eliminating Spots in Flash Pictures

Several weeks ago, a reader asked about white spots showing up in nighttime flash photos. "Sometimes," Shahul Ahamed wrote, "I get small, semi-transparent white circles in my pictures when I shoot outdoors at night. Can you tell me what is causing them and how to avoid them?"

At the time, I had suggested that the most likely cause of this problem was glare reflecting into the lens. A lot of readers had their own theories on this one, but I like Jim White's explanation the best. He writes: "I'm convinced the spots are caused by out-of-focus specks of dust, close to the lens, illuminated by the camera's flash."

I think that Jim nailed it. His explanation makes a lot of sense. And while you might think it sounds impossible to prevent, the reality is that those specks of dust will probably show up only under certain circumstances, such as when you fire your camera's built-in flash while using the camera's wide-angle zoom mode and a high ISO setting. A little experimentation with the camera settings might make those spots be gone forever.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This Week's Hot Pic: "Kite Flying," by Denise Sturman, Renton, Washington

About this week's photo, Denise writes: "I took this photo of my son with an old 1.3-megapixel Sony Mavica. I still like this camera for close-up shots. Although it's only a 1.3 megapixel, it still has great zoom and is a good camera to take to the beach. I love the angle of the shot as it makes him feel pretty big when he looks at the photo."