October 2024
Morlaix, France.

Our cruise stops in France included Brest, and our excursion bus took us to Morlaix. There, we took a walking tour through the city’s oldest sections. During our walk, we visited Église Saint-Mélaine de Morlaix, a Gothic church completed in 1489. We approached the church on the left in the photos, opposite the front doors, and walked around to the entrance.

The street view also features a bridge and the railroad viaduct, completed in 1865. The viaduct carries train traffic across the Morlaix River from Paris to Brest. The old buildings in Morlaix prompted me to create another Day-to-Night photo, and I found the picture below in my gallery of images from Morlaix.

I’ve enjoyed the hour or so it takes to create the conversion as I study how I might change the sky and relight the shot to simulate night or, in this case, early morning. I learned the techniques from a YouTuber, Jamie Mathlin. He uses Photoshop and Lightroom Classic to create his day-to-night images. He has plenty of examples in his video series from which to learn.

I started with Photoshop to use its generative removal tools. The power lines and cables above the bridge and the viaduct were quickly removed. I then removed the post and sign in front of the church, as well as the extra street sign on the building to the right. Finally, I removed the man with the red shirt and the box truck under the bridge on the left. Some might say that this impugns the integrity of the photo. I say it’s a day-to-night conversion. Its integrity is already impugned. >grin<

Mr. Mathlin uses Photoshop’s Sky Replacement tool to swap the sky. He’s a master at it, but spends a lot of time tweaking the roofline and other details to get the new sky to blend correctly. In my opinion, Luminar Neo’s Sky Replacement tool is much better at compositing the new sky into an image. The sky I selected has the sun’s first light coming from the right. That is a correct placement, as the street view of the viaduct from this location is to the north.

After sending the image back to Lightroom Classic, I lowered the exposure to darken it. The sky was too bright, so I used the color mixer to tone down the reds and oranges. Then, I added a slight radial gradient to the sky over the brightest area and adjusted the highlights to match the rest of the image in brightness.

Finally, my favorite part of these day-to-night conversions is lighting the street. Using radial gradients per Mr. Mathlin’s techniques, I illuminated the two lamps and the areas behind and beneath them. I also added two lights to the scene. I imagined a street light would be visible on the building behind the bridge in the background. Using a radial gradient, I added some light in the area on the upper right corner of the bridge, and then I subtracted a brush from the mask to remove the light from in front of the bridge. If the light is behind the bridge, no light will shine on the visible side of the bridge. Similarly, I added a gradient to the street to simulate the effect of the added light. Again, I subtracted a brush to remove the gradient light from the bridge.

I then added a streetlight to the left of the image, in front of the church. Radial gradients in Lightroom don’t need to be placed entirely on the image. The center point of the radial was positioned to the left of the left edge of the photo, so only the farthest right side of the radial provided some light on the church to balance the light on the right side.

My WordPress theme doesn’t display dark scenes very well. Darker images are best shown on a black background. I’ve posted these two photos in 2K HD on my Flickr site so you can see them better on a dark background. Click on either image to view it more clearly, or visit the album here.

John Steiner