Sometimes you need to turn day into night.
Especially when you’re trying to take your architectural rendering from day to night.
You want to impress your clients or professor but you know you won’t achieve the same look if you use the same image taken at night.
Why? Because the time of day or night can actually make a profound difference in your rendering.
And if that perfect image can only be taken during the day, you need the right tools to turn day into night.
So let’s learn all about architectural rendering using Photoshop to turn day into night.
There are a lot of reasons to use a rendering.
The most common uses are for marketing, presentation, and design analysis.
Here are the most common reasons why an architectural student or professional might find architectural rendering useful.
The best program to achieve the results you desire to turn day into night is to use Photoshop.
Let’s learn the best steps to take and resources to use when turning your architectural rendering from day to night.
Not all images will work well for this type of architectural rendering.
The images that are best to use in a rendering are when:
Using images that contain these issues will make the project take much longer and may not end with the desired result you’re looking to achieve.
The first step is to turn off certain layers in the original daytime scene that may not necessarily belong in your evening scene.
Turn off such daytime layers such as:
To turn off layers you:
This will help you darken the image a bit.
After all, if you’re doing an architectural rendering that’s supposed to be an evening image, you can’t have natural daylight.
To do this you: Create a Curves Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves). Then adjust the sliders.
Dragging the curve down will darken the image.
The shadows caused by the sun will most likely be one of the more difficult features to remove.
However, using the photoshop tool “Clone Stamp Tool,” you can edit the sharp shadows out.
Since trees tend to be their own layer, often you can simply take those out rather than having to use the Clone Stamp Tool.
Removing these sharp shadows is essential. It will otherwise confuse the viewer who isn’t expecting shadows to appear at night.
This is kind of a no-brainer. After all, we’re turning day into night so things should get darker.
Luckily, this is a rather easy step.
For your architectural renderings here’s what to do for the blue nighttime tint:
You may not wish to darken the sky itself. Often there isn’t much of a difference and you might want to contrast the lighter sky with darker buildings.
However, if you want to go darker you can create a new layer by adding black.
Here’s how:
Colors at night are less vibrant.
Editing the coloring will help you pull out more detail.
It will also add more contrast to the architectural rendering and darken it a little more.
To change the vibrancy from daytime colors to nighttime colors in your renderings you:
You want to enhance lighting in certain areas of your rendering.
You’ll have to manually paint light into the scene.
You can use lighting for:
To create light coming from a window:
There are also some features you can add to give the appearance of nighttime.
Here are some ideas that might help enhance the image.
Adding a wet ground when turning your rendering from day to night can achieve several desired results.
Wet pavement can:
There are other features you can add to create a contrasting look. It’s just a matter of finding the right images to enhance your rendering.
You can add objects to your architectural rendering to enhance the mood you’re trying to capture.
Adding raingear and umbrellas to a wet night scene adds to the feeling of the wet weather while not distracting the viewer with close up views of the individual people.
You may also want to subtract the sun and add in the moon to your nighttime scene.
It can also activate the scene you’re showing.
Subtracting items from your rendering can also help lessen the distraction of the work.
It depends on what the project is.
For exteriors where turning day to night it may take:
Whether you’re a student or a professional architect, it’s so much easier to complete assignments when you have the right tools.
One of those tools is having the right images at your disposal. We’ve compiled them conveniently for you to use, at the price that works best for you.