PXC Day for Night Challenge

Alex posted a challenge to turn this into day for night and also aging the mansion to be 100 years old. Extra credit for putting it in a larger matte.

I decided to straighten the building and did this with Human Software's Photoshop plugin, Squizz. I used a layer mask and removed the sky. I started to remove the modern day stuff such as the rails etc. with the clone tool and painting parts. Since it was going to be night and I planned on lighting a few window, I chose to remove some shadows where the light would fall. I enlarged the trees, actually later, but it was done on the base, so shows in this early step.

I found some trees to use for the background as I had decided to take the mansion into a more rural local.

I found this beautiful sky.

I started compositing pieces. Found a large tree. I painted parts of it to make it fuller as it was too thin and extended the ground just to let me start visualizing.

Found a bit of foliage. I duplicated and copied it twice more and shifted the posts and started painting the foliage to diversify the duplicates.

Found a great weedy field and painted parts in that were missing. let the growth come up to the level of the top step....you'll have to wade through the grasses to get to this hideaway.

I started blocking in the wooden doors to get rid of the modern glass ones.

Started to dirty and dodge and paint vines.

Found some cool doors and put them in.

Used a Hue/Sat/Val adjustment layer to darken. There were also some individual adjustment layers attached to single layers throughout.

Added a blue cast with an additional H/S/V adjustment layer and revealed the lit parts through its mask.

Did another H/S/V adjustment layer, this one colorized to a bright orange yellow and revealed it through it's mask as well which gave it its finishing touches.

A larger version may be seen here.