Railroad tracks at night #3: even darker tonality, but with increased saturation and local contrast Railroad tracks at night #2: darker tonality, bluer hues, and decreased saturation and local contrast The stars were taken from a Stellarium screenshot of the night sky on the date of and near the location where the photograph was taken. Equally helpful was spending a lot of time outside actually looking at how colors and lighting change over time and from various vantage points as the sun drops further and further below the horizon. 's Mesopic changes in color appearance was very helpful for figuring out Hue and Chroma modifications for turning a day shot into late evening or night. The three 'day into night' versions shown below are equal parts trying to capture what the scene actually would have looked like at night, and trying to make a pleasing rendition of what the scene would have looked like. So ideally the images are viewed on a larger display device under suitably dim ('editing' rather than 'office' or 'daylight') viewing conditions. Also if the ambient light is very bright, you won't see much detail.

On a small viewing screen you might not see much detail in such dark-tonality images.

Or maybe I need to recalibrate and reprofile my own monitor.

If the images look light and desaturated, or if the images have crushed shadows and appear very saturated, then there's a good chance that there is a problem with your monitor black point. The darkest dark colors in each image measure between L=3.5 and L=5.0, which should be displayable on most monitors.

The images shown on the rest of this page have a dark overall tonality and ideally should be viewed in a darkened room.Here's the 'from the camera' daylight image that will be turned into a night scene: Railroad tracks as shot Viewing notes: This page shows four examples of making a late-evening/night scene from a photograph of some railroad tracks taken in the late afternoon under a blue sky with lots of bright sunshine.

Introduction: Making a night scene from a daylight shot

Using darktable with gimp