• Although many professional photographers spend countless hours positioning lighting, creating the perfect backdrops and checking the weather to ensure a sunny day before their photo shoots, sometimes you want to have darkness in your photos. Whether you're trying to create a mood, illustrate a venue or just play around with your looks, it's possible to add dark effects to your images with a couple of clicks in Photoshop. Photoshop, a graphics program available as part of the Adobe Creative Suite, allows you to darken your images so you and your artwork can fade to black.
  
  

Sky

• If you wanted to photograph a dark, ominous sky but the National Weather Service just wouldn't cooperate, you don't have to scrap your film and efforts. Using Photoshop, you'll be able to quickly add as much doom and gloom to your skyscape as desired. Photoshop's "Levels" menu is made up of two slider triangles; one black and one white. Each controls the degree of darkness and lighting in a picture. To change your entire picture to a darker mood, you move the light/white slider triangle to the left into the dark/black triangle area. Images adjust as you move, so you can see exactly the effect your actions have on your picture. You don't have to change the entire picture all at once. Photoshop's selection tool, the "Lasso," may be used to select a certain area, such as the sky, a person's face or a house, which can then be turned darker or the area around it, leaving that selected area bathed in moonlight or glare.
  
  

Filters

• Sometimes, it's just physically impossible to capture an image on film they way you want it to look. You can't turn your family home into a glowing neon sign, for example, but with a couple of quick clicks in Photoshop, your residence can look like it belongs on the Las Vegas strip. The glow and other dark effects are created through Photoshop filters, a collection of tools you can apply to your images. The "Glowing Edges" filter is applied to a photo, where you have three control slider bars determining how large the glowing tubes should look and how much detail they should pick up. The rest of your picture remains dark. Other ways to darken your images are with the "Neon Glow" and "Solarize" filters, each of which renders your image into black or very dark shades. Pick up accents throughout the picture to highlight them.
  
  

Makeup

• Gothic styling isn't just for backdrops. You can use Photoshop to style makeup with dark effects, without even cracking eyeliner or mascara. This is also a way to experiment with a new look before purchasing expensive cosmetics or play around with an image before heading out to a costume party. Dark makeup effects are achieved in Photoshop using a couple of simple tools. Once you've got a head shot open in the program and zoomed in with the "Magnifier" tool, the "Lasso" tool works well to select an area such as the lips. With the lips selected, Photoshop's "Hue/Saturation" menu can create dark makeup effects. For a quick way to blacken lips, the "Saturation" slider may be moved all the way to the left. This removes all color from the selected area. To play around with some color, such as a deep blood-red or royal purple, move the "Hue" slider bar to the left or right. This same process works to add dark makeup effects for eyeshadow and blush.