Create a Emotional Midnight Photo Manipulation with Painting-Like Effects Part 3 End

Step 8 - Moon

Create a layer below the Lady. Load the Moon brushes and paint with white color the moon (I deleted the left part of the moon because I didn't like it).

Step 9 - Desaturation

Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and set Saturation at -15.

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Step 10 - Lights

We need to add some light now and we are going to do it with two layers. Let's start with moonlight. Paint some rays of light from the moon to the lady with a hard round brush using a light color (not pure white). Apply Gaussian Blur (65px) and set the layer to Soft Light - Opacity and Fill 80%

Create an other layer and set it Soft Light (Opacity and Fill 70%). Pick the color #96dce0 and paint some lights at the bottom of the manipulation. (Below you can see where exactly). This time you have to use a soft brush since we're not going to add any blur.

This is the result so far.

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Step 11 - Contrast

Add a Curves Adjustment Layer and select the 'Linear Contrast' from the presets.

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Step 12 - Dodge & Burn

We are going to work on lights and shadows with Dodge Tool and Burn Tool.

Create a new layer and set it to Overlay. Go to Edit > Fill > 50% Gray.

Take the Dodge Tool and give life to lights. Look at the image below. I used Midtones as Range (Exposure 10%/15%) for the areas with soft white. I used Highlights Range where white is more vivid.

Take the Burn Tool (Midtones as Range - Exposure 10%/20%) and paint shadows where you see dark strokes in the image below.

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Step 13 - Final Adjustments

If we are happy with the result (I only added some hair) we are going to merge layers to apply some filters. (Press Shift+CTRL+ALT+E)

Go to Filters > Lens Correction. A window will pop up. In the Custom menu set the amount of Vignette at -20.

Duplicate this layer. Go to Filter > Other > High pass I use this filter to sharpen details (Generally between 1px and 3px). When you're done set the layer to Overlay.

Create a new layer. With a soft white brush paint the two dots in her eyes.

Final Results

Download the PSD

Moonlight Serenade.zip | 51.08 MB
Download from Website