Firstly, for the sake of being able to manipulate the image easily and alter the scale of components, I took separate selections of the furniture, saved them in their own folders and cleaned up the rest of the space to give myself more of a blank canvas to work with.
Doing this at the beginning worked as a huge advantage when it came to placing the fire pit and making sure all of the accompanying furniture was scaled accurately in relation to the product we are selling.
I then brought the chairs back, putting each on their own layer so if I needed to then I could individually make edits at a later point. I repositioned them with much wider spacing to allow for the correct amount of space needed for the pit while creating a focal point for the product.
On a layer beneath the chair selections I created very subtle shadows using the multiply blending mode under the chairs so they still looked like they were naturally part of the image.
Using a curves adjustment level I created the dark night mode by altering the individual RGB layers, particularly the blue channel. This was altered further by increasing the contrast of the shadows in the curves adjustment layer.
Once the initial highlights were made I made another curves adjustment level, this time creating shadows to incorporate the type of contrast you would find in harsh lighting of the fire at night time, creating more depth. This was done by creating the desired level of shadow, adding a mask, inverting then painting back where I wanted the shadows and intensifying them on the areas where needed.
I then looked at warming up the image as the current lighting had a very white clinical tone. I created this by using the colour lookup setting and applying edgy amber. A mask was then applied to this and I brought back the warmth to the areas I wanted it, making it more intense in and around the fire. I also lowered the opacity of this layer a little so the outcome wouldn't look too orange, just warm enough to portray the glow of the fire and set a realistic atmosphere.
Final adjustments were made to the highlights after the warmth was applied by creating another curves adjustment layer, inverting its mask and painting back white hot highlights to really show the contrasting light from the fire and really highlight where the hottest, most lit up points would be from the fire lights reflection.
Final Lifestyle Image:
Following the same process, I created a night time shot for this fire pit design too.
