Turn an Ordinary Day Scene Into a Magical Night Scene

Step 1

Open up a new document (600X600px) and fill it with black.

Step 2

Paste in an image of the sea. (original photo: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1067855)

Step 3

Go to image>adjustments>desaturate to grayscale your image. Then go to image>adjustments>brightness/contrast and up the contrast to around +35.

Step 4

Now go to image>adjustments>color balance and apply the settings shown below.

Step 5

Now create a new layer and make the shapes shown below.

Step 6

Now go filter>distort>ripple and apply the settings shown below:

Step 7

Now create a new layer below your red shapes layer but above your photo layer called 'black cover'. Fill this layer with black, and then select your red shapes layer. Select your red shapes using the magic wand tool, and then hide this layer, return to your 'black cover' layer and hit delete. This should expose the photo beneath.

Step 8

Now duplicate your 'black cover' layer. Hide the duplicate and apply a strong gaussian blur to the original.

Step 9

Now make your duplicate visible and apply the gaussian blur settings shown below. Then reduce this layer's opacity to around 70%.

Step 10

The light stream over the sea is looking good, but the sky is a little too obvious. To fix this I use a large, soft black paintbrush (10% opacity) to brush over it and cover up the sky a little.

Step 11

Now create a new top layer called 'moon'. Create a small circle using your elliptical marquee tool and fill it with 3E4743. Apply a 1.0px gaussian blur to the layer.

Step 12

Now select this shape using your magic wand tool (set to 0% tolerance). Create a new layer called 'moon cloud overlay' and go to filter>render>clouds. This should fill your moon selection with some nice looking clouds. Then reduce this layer's opacity to 50% to make them a little more subtle.

Step 13

Now duplicate your 'moon cloud overlay' layer and rename it 'moon light'. Then use a circular marquee tool to cut away most of the shape, leaving a sliver at the base of the moon. Then go to the layer's blending options and apply a white color overlay. Finally apply a white outer glow to give the impression of intense light.

Step 14

Based on the position of the moons light the sky is wrong at the moment. There shouldn't be any light sky above the moon, only below it. To fix this I use a large, soft black brush to brush over the sky above my moon. Then to brighten up the sky directly beneath my moon I erase this area on my 'black cover' layers, to expose the light of the photo beneath.

Step 15

Now I download a free star brush/image set (http://www.easyelements.com/photoshop-star-brush-set.html). I paste in one of the images from the set and set the layer's screen mode to screen. Then I move this layer beneath my 'black cover' layers but above my photo layer. Finally I reduce it's opacity to 50%.

Step 16

To make my moon look a little better I apply a subtle outer/inner glow effect.

And We're Done!

To finish things off I add some text to the image and give it an outer glow effect.