I have an image of a living room, that is naturally illuminated, very bright, and I need to alter the image as if it was illuminated at night by a dim light, and I need it to look natural.
So far my attempts have failed, it doesn't look natural at all.
Is there a way to darken the whole image of the living room so it looks natural?
(I'm quite newbie with PS, the more steps you indicate the better)
Editing levels, exposure, colors and local retouches should provide a not-bad result but reshooting would be the point. Although, there's a little trick included in Ps for doing just that day-to-night job. It's not magic, so the results won't be perfect or maybe It won't just fit your desired results but it's worth a try.
Create a new Color lookup adjustement layer above your image (Layer > New adjustement layer > Color lookup > Ok) then with that layer selected, show the properties panel (Window > Properties), select "3DLUT File" and "NightFromDay" from the dropdown list at the right. That's it. You can control the amount of effect by adjusting the opacity of that layer.
Give it a try!
Ps.: after that you can tweak levels and colors for better results
So this is a photo of a living room and you're not redoing the shot? If so, this is probably going to be pretty tough, because you might be seeing shadows that cannot be removed without painting them out using either the dodge/burn tool, the clone stamp tool, or an alternative. But the biggest difference can be achieved through layers. Check out the images I've attached below. Before you begin, be sure to save the original photo in a known location.
1) Start by duplicating the layer for extra safety.
2) on the layers panel, click that little icon in the bottom right and then levels. Move the leftmost slider to the right to dark the darkest values, and the middle slider to the right to darken the middle values.
3) Back on the layers panel in the bottom right, click the same icon and then Curves. Move the center point of the diagonal to the bottom right. You'll see the image darken.
4) Back on the layers panel in the bottom right, click the same icon and then Saturation. Dark photography might look a bit more natural with less color (even though bright sunlight/overexposure washes out color, it still looks a bit more natural. I don't know why!
Now, these layers are floating on top of your base photo layer, and you can raise/lower their visibility with the layer opacity, or else mask the strength out using a black paintbrush tool on the layer opacity (on the players panel, click the white box on the left of the layer name).
