In terms of aesthetics, the night photos show us a different perspective of the beauty and glamour of the object. Being a car nerd and having one must have provoked you to show off some beautiful night pictures of your car.
For this, you may wonder, how to edit night car photos? It has become very simple to edit photos taken at night using smartphones or a PC. There are many paid and free photo editing applications available which can be effectively used for this purpose.
We provide professional car image editing services that you are probably looking for.
Once you have perfected the technique for editing nighttime images, the results can help you gain popularity and build your brand. This article will go over how-to guides and software applications for editing nighttime car images.
What Should You Edit in Night Car Photos?
To edit your night car photos, you may need to change a lot of settings under any application. Due to the strong chips of iPhones, you can edit night car photos on iPhone apps without needing a PC.
The basic things to change while editing a night car photo are:
- Exposure
- Contrast
- White balance
- Shadow
- Temperature
- Color grading
- Saturation
- Luminance
Most stock photo editing applications on a smartphone or a PC won’t allow you all these options. That is why it is better to use authentic software such as Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom for computers.
These days, smartphones like the iPhone and Android models use strong chipsets to perform demanding photo editing applications.
There are also smartphone versions of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, which are free to use. Hence, one can edit car photos in Lightroom mobile as well.
Furthermore, you can use Google’s Snapseed application or Picsart to get more reliable options for editing.
How to Edit Night Car Photos?
There are numerous ways to edit night car photos. The first and most important step before going into editing is the software selection. In this section, the most common yet popular photo editing apps will be discussed for better and aesthetic results.
Method 1: By Using Lightroom
Lightroom is one of the most useful tools for editing nighttime car photos. Moreover, it is available for both PC and smartphones with similar interfaces. A similar interface is available in photoshop if you need to edit car photos on photoshop.
Step 1: Choosing the Best Picture
Firstly, you must take multiple pictures of your car using different settings of the camera. From all the RAW images, you should select the best looking with better exposure and light for editing.
Step 2: Exposure Correction
Exposure is the primary thing you should start with while editing the night car photos. Drag the exposure slider slightly upwards to better look at the details and deep shadows on the car body.
It is better not to overexpose the picture than the original settings. For darker and more intense results, you can decrease it. But be careful about the details while sliding the exposure.
Step 3: Highlight and Shadow Correction
It is an important step that most people miss. Lower the highlight to get more focus on the background. The details in the background get enhanced without damaging the quality of the subject.
Next, you can increase the shadows by 4-5 units to increase the focus on the car. Try not to bring up too much noise doing it.
Step 4: Whites and Blacks Correction
It is better to increase the White a bit or leave it as it was for night photos. It helps to pop the details in the background. But on the contrary, the Blacks should be balanced with a slight increment so that the detail of the subject is not damaged.
Step 5: Saturation Control
The saturation correction depends upon the exposure of colors in your car photo. You should handle it very carefully because over or under-saturated balance degrades the color quality of the subject.
Step 6: Color Balance
In this step, you need to focus on the available colors in the photo. Check which colors can highlight the car without causing much damage to the background. It requires a lot of trial and error to balance the color grading.
For this, you should start with the colors of the car body, headlights, and tints of the window panels for better results.
Step 7: Sharpening the Photo
For nighttime photos, it is important to look out for the noise on the subject. Increasing the sharpness will also increase the amount of noise.
Hence, you can use the masking option under sharpening to check the areas with higher noise and eliminate them without making the picture smooth.
Method 2: By Using Snapseed
Snapseed is Google’s free yet very efficient photo editing application based on smartphones. It allows you to edit your night car photos on the go without needing heavy computer setups. The results from Snapseeds are also quite satisfactory for social media uploads.
Step 1: Selecting Photo
Start by selecting and opening the picture on the Snapseed interface. There are three major options Styles, Tools, and exports. Select the tools to open all the basic image tuning options.
Step 2: Tuning Image
In the upper left corner is the tuning option. Under which you will find the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Ambiance, Highlights, Shadows, and warmth sliders.
For enhancing, night car photos, you must increase the brightness, contrast, ambiance, and highlights. All these should be balanced perfectly by sliding the pointers.
On the other hand, you can decrease the saturation, shadows, and warmth by a few points to focus on the aesthetics of the nighttime car photo.
Step 3: Curve Correction
Nextly, select the “Curves” under the tools option and manipulate it to get the suitable color and highlights of the picture. Select the color grading palette to focus on the color correction of the car body. It can be avoided if the car is painted black or white.
Step 4: White Balance
It is not mandatory to use this section for night photos. But if necessary, the tints and temperature of the photo can be shifted using the White balance.
Step 5: Other Options
Apart from there, there are some advanced buttons for editing, such as the “Selective.” It allows you to select a specific area on the photo and tune it manually. You can use it to change the focus of the background or subject.
Moreover, using the Brush tool, you can manually shift the saturation, temperature, and exposure on the selected fields. It gives you moreover editing the pictures. But these should be handled carefully as the slightest missing details can ruin the photo.
Some Tips on Editing Night Car Photos?
There are some mandatory factors that you must emphasize more while editing night car photos. These tips will help you get good reviews if you run a nighttime image editing service.
Lighting
Lightening is the key factor for nighttime car photos. Makes sure the picture is taken in lower ISO and higher exposure settings for maximum light. It allows controlling the lightning easily while editing.
Underexposed pictures have very low room for manipulating the brightness or exposure afterward.
Car Painting
Take more time to focus on the paint color of the car. Since night photos have lower color intensity capture, you must manually pop the colors of the painting as naturally as possible. If the car is painted in black or white, the work becomes easier.
Background Color Selection
The background in the nighttime car photos greatly affected the viewers. Pay attention to the details of the background. If it’s nature, then the colors should not get faded or under-saturated.
Besides, if there are writings, posters, or buildings in the background, the sharpening of the background should be balanced carefully.
Conclusion
For nighttime car photos, editing is a major and most important step. This is because the RAW picture often fails to display the actual color and highlights of the car.
Understanding photo editing techniques can help you gain visibility on social networking sites or for paid jobs. Since modern smartphone applications also provide comparable results, you can use this skill without spending much money on costly software.
If you’re looking for a professional car image editing service, then check out this car image editing service or contact us.
We hope that this article has become educational and satisfied your curiosity regarding photo editing. Now that you know how to edit, you can take any nighttime driving photo and turn it into a masterpiece.
