Night out photo filter — make any selfie look like 2am

How to use the night out photo filter

1. Step 1

   Upload a selfie

   A clear JPG, PNG or WebP up to 8 MB. A plain daytime photo works fine — the filter supplies the night.

2. Step 2

   Pick a night look

   Start from Night-out flash, Night wash or Neon crossing, or describe the room you want in a few words.

3. Step 3

   Generate and save

   Sign in and press Generate. The included engine costs 20 credits; sharper ones cost more.

Why night photos look the way they do

A night-out photo is defined by one light source doing almost all the work. A phone flash fires straight at the face from a short distance, so skin reads bright and slightly shiny while everything more than a metre away drops into near-black. That falloff is the signature: the subject is lit, the room is a suggestion.

The rest comes from whatever is glowing behind you. Bar signs, stage lights and phone screens push colored light into the edges of the frame — magenta, cyan, sodium orange — and that color lands on hair, shoulders and the side of the face rather than the front. The filter rebuilds both halves: a hard frontal key on you, colored spill behind you.

Night looks you can start from

Night-out flash is the classic bathroom-mirror-and-bar-corner shot, hard flash and a dark room. Night wash leans into stage color, with a wide sweep of one strong hue across the whole frame. Neon crossing puts you on a wet street under signs, closer to a film still than a party photo.

Each look keeps your face, hair and clothing recognisable and changes only the light, color and background. Running the same selfie through two of them and comparing is usually faster than trying to describe the exact room you had in mind.

Which photos convert well

Flat, even light is the best starting point, which is counterintuitive. A photo taken indoors near a window or outside on an overcast day gives the filter a clean face to relight. A selfie that already has a harsh shadow across half the face fights whatever new light you ask for, and the result tends to look like two photos layered.

Frame yourself from the chest up. Night looks put most of their detail in the face and the first few inches around it, so a full-body shot spends most of the frame on a background that will end up dark anyway.

Tips for better results

• Say the room, not the mood: 'basement bar with a red sign' beats 'make it moody'.
• One color reads better than three. Pick magenta or cyan or orange, not all of them.
• Keep your eyes on the lens in the source photo — flash looks land best on a straight-on face.
• If the result looks too clean, ask for grain or a slight motion blur in the background.
• Avoid photos where you are already backlit; there is no face detail left to relight.

FAQ

Only use photos you have the right to use. See our safety guidelines.