How do you create variations for a picture?

[Headache]

I.E., giving a certain picture an "evening" and "night" look. I tried experimenting on Photoshop but it turned disastrous... So I hope you guys can help me and give me some tips.

I want to give this picture an "evening" and "night" version. How do I do that? \:

[Auro-Cyanide]

You use 'Colour Balance', 'Brightness/Contrast' and possibly 'Hue/Saturation' found under Layers>Adjustments. That will give you control of colours and light quality.

[Marcelo_Orlando]

Check under "Image - Adjustments - Curves and you can also use photo filter. Those should help.

[Niki]

I'm not good with backgrounds or anything but I hope I helped >< (I don't really know what I'm saying but here goes!)

For a 'night' version, I duplicated the layer with the photo and used Soft Light so that the whites were brighter. Then I added a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and tweaked the brightness so it was lower. After that I made a Hard Light layer filled with dark blue. Play around with the opacity on all the layers~
I know the blue light looks a bit... odd >< And my version's a little dark (though I like it that way). I'm sure other people have better methods! For an evening one, say around sunset, you could just do the same thing with orange I suppose? I haven't tried ^^;;

Sorry if mine looks like crap ;_; I'm not that good with Photoshop.

[Endorphin]

Uhm... I tried too, so that I could explain it better, but I let me say this: the image is a rather bad pick.
Look at the window.
The light is way to bright - it would take a lot of editing to restore the parts of the picture that reflect the light too much [e.g. glass (from the cupboard thingy), floor etc.] and redrawing things like the window.
If you want to edit a picture, you have to look out, that it is neutral.
Not tinted [from sunsets for example - of course you can restore this, but it is harder] and not to bright/dark.

Well, here are a few tips when changing colors:
* When making it night-ish, make sure to decrease the saturation! A night is not totally blue or something. When it's dark, we can't see the colors that well, so desaturate it.
* Play with contrast - it helps a lot. Don't just decrease the lightness.
* For evenings, there are two ways. Either desaturating and making it darker (for a dull/sadder feeling), or using a Gradient Map on Overlay. You'll have to try to get the effect you wanted~

With a little practice you'll surely be able to do it. :>
Don't give up~

- Ryouko

[Anna]

You basically mess around until it looks right, which might vary from picture to picture. This wasn't a very neutral picture though ^^;.

It's not perfect, but I added some layers and changed the layer mode and opacity of the layers. Download the zip to get my .psd files and see for yourself what I did . The only things you can't see is that I turned down the lightness on both layers that contain the picture.

As some people said, messing around with contrast and such also helps a lot.

[Gear]

Shoot in RAW. That helps a LOT.