When Day Turns to Night … Again
Once again our artist vision and retouching skills were put to the test this summer with another night from day conversion for a new day|night backing.
Way back in 2018, long before Precision Backdrops was even a thought, our photographer (myself) spent a day photographing a new modern parking garage for both the architect and parking consultant, capturing roughly 15 images. Job was finished, images were archived, and that was that.
Then, early this year, with some time on our hands, I went through my previous 20 years of architectural photography looking at images that could work for backings. Although the vast majority of those images would not work for various reasons, I did come across a hand full that did, including the image to the right of that parking garage. This was added to our catalog, and we went back to marketing and working on other custom jobs. Truth be told, I was not too convinced anyone would be interested in a backing of a parking garage, looking at this addition as more of a “fleshing out” of our catalog.
Then a few months later, and much to my surprise, a production inquired about having that image turned into a day|night backing. Of course, we did not have the corresponding night image, so it was off to Photoshop to simulate one from scratch.
Our first job was to reverse the orientation of the image, a request from the production, and expand on the right and left sides while cropping much of the top and bottom. The source material for the expansion came from the image itself, leading to a bit of repetitiveness and odd looking digital seams where each expansion started. Generative fill was used to correct for this and the sky was replaced with one from our catalog. Likewise, discernible signs were either removed or flipped back, so as not to appear reversed, and any moving cars or people were removed. Additional street lights were added to allow for more light in the night image. Last, the shadow cast from the metal curtain at the top was removed since this would not look right in the night image.
Our standard night from day conversion that we use in all of our day|night backings was then applied.
Since we did not have the actual night image to work with and rely on warming up the scene, an overall warm tone was added to the image. Next, street lights, sconces and visible ceiling lights were painted in followed by appropriate light scallops on buildings, fences, cars, trees, and the ground. We did pay special attention to how the metal curtain would look at night, providing a few options to the production designer, and ultimately settling on only having the top lit.
Although much of this work has become intuitive at this point in my career, the light on the side of building to the right did throw me for a loop. I spent roughly 20 minutes painting in light to emulate what those two sconces could produce with nothing looking right. So I spent then next 10 minutes flipping though my architectural photography catalog finding a night image I captured of a building made from similar materials with similar sconces from a similar angle. Using that as guidance, I was able to paint in scallops that felt natural.
From here it was just a matter of spending the time to mask out and then brighten the garage interior, stairwell, and windows within the view. Most of this was simple, albeit tedious. The stairwell though did need a more artistic approach given the glass curtain and its overall architectural design.
Our final touch was to add an orange glow to all of the light we added in post before getting final print approval from the production.
