EVOL 03 — NIGHTFALL
Night, tungsten and twilight. Free Lightroom presets.
rezaevol.com


WHY THESE EXIST
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You get the exposure right and the picture still looks like nothing. The
blacks go grey, the lights don't glow, and none of it feels like being
there.

Most night presets hand you one slider called Glow. But the glow in a film
photo is really two things — the haze the lens throws over the whole frame,
and the warm bleed that only ever shows up around a bright light. They're
separate, so this pack keeps them separate.


HOW TO USE IT
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Set your white balance and exposure first. Then either click one of the
one-click looks and stop, or build it up yourself.

    00a  Reception    warm interiors, mixed with flash
    00b  Blue Hour    the twenty minutes after sunset
    00c  City         streets, signage, neon

Or:

    01   Air          haze over the whole frame — how old your lens feels
    02   Density      rich blacks that still hold their falloff
    03   Illuminant   what colour the light is
    04   Mesopic      drains colour the way your eyes do in the dark
    05   Sources      stops neon blowing into flat blobs
    06   Grain        grain, plus the noise cleanup night shots need

Same number = same job = pick ONE. Different numbers stack freely.

Everything except the one-click looks has an Amount slider, 0–200%. If
something's too strong, turn it down rather than skipping it.


WHICH ILLUMINANT
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This is the one choice that really matters. Pick the one that matches
where you actually were.

  03a  TUNGSTEN — receptions, candles, string lights, warm practicals.
       Warm highlights and cool shadows. Once you've set white balance for
       a warm key light, anything not lit by it goes blue on its own; this
       leans into that rather than fighting it.

  03b  BLUE HOUR — after sunset. This is the one that deliberately doesn't
       split the shadows and highlights, and there's a reason: once the sun
       is down there's no second light source, so everything outside is lit
       by the same sky. One overall cast is what blue hour actually looks
       like.

  03c  SODIUM & LED — city streets, where old orange lamps and new white
       ones share a frame. That warm/cool split is real, so this widens it
       instead of flattening it out.


A FEW THINGS WORTH KNOWING
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  04 takes colour out of the SCENE. 03 puts the colour of the LIGHT back.
  They're different things and they don't cancel out — your eyes lose the
  colour of objects in the dark while the lamp overhead keeps its own.

  Skin is mostly red, and 04b pulls red down hard. If faces go lifeless,
  step back to 04a.

  Blue is always the noisiest channel at night — there's simply less blue
  light in a warm room, and your camera has to amplify what little there is.
  That's why 06 includes a good dose of colour noise reduction, and why the
  shadow tinting in 03 is kept restrained.


WHAT THEY WON'T TOUCH
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    White Balance · Temperature · Tint
    Exposure · Contrast · Highlights · Shadows · Whites · Blacks
    Vibrance · Saturation · Sharpening
    Camera profile · Lens corrections · Crop
    Masks — the main pack has none at all

One difference from Silver: this pack DOES write Colour Grading, because
that's how the illuminant presets work. If you tone your night shots by
hand, do it after these rather than before.


THE THREE MASKED EXTRAS — READ THIS FIRST
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The bonus folder has three presets that add a MASK. They're the only ones
in the whole line that do, and masks work differently:

    LIGHTROOM ADDS PRESET MASKS. It never replaces them.
    NO PRESET CAN REMOVE A MASK. Not these, not anyone's.
    APPLY ONE TWICE AND YOU GET TWO. Delete the spare by hand in the
    Masking panel.

That's how Lightroom works, not something wrong with these files. It's also
why the main pack has no masks and none of the one-click looks contains
one. The two folders are separate, so you can install the main pack and
never see a mask.

Needs Lightroom Classic 11 or newer, or Camera Raw 14 or newer.

  M1  HALATION — CORE
      The tight warm glow right at the edge of a bright light.

  M2  HALATION — SKIRT
      The wider, fainter bleed further out. Stack it under M1 for the full
      effect, or use it alone for something subtler.

  M3  SOURCES — PATH TO WHITE
      Lets the middle of a neon tube go white while the glow around it
      stays coloured, the way film does. Use it WITH 05, not instead of it
      — 05 keeps the sign from blowing out, M3 decides what colour the
      middle of it is.


BEING STRAIGHT ABOUT A COUPLE OF THINGS
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  05 doesn't desaturate a neon sign, it just stops it blowing out. Real
  desaturation needs a mask, which is M3.

  Grain lands on the deep shadows as heavily as the midtones, which real
  film doesn't do. Lightroom can't vary it by tone from inside a preset.

  01 Air is global and has no idea where the lights in your frame are, so
  a very bright scene wants a bit more than it gives and a nearly black one
  wants less. That's what the Amount slider is for.


INSTALLING
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LIGHTROOM CLASSIC
  Develop → Presets panel → the + button → Import Presets.
  If nothing appears, quit Lightroom completely and reopen it.

LIGHTROOM DESKTOP (cloud)
  File → Import Profiles & Presets → select the zip.

LIGHTROOM MOBILE
  Open a photo → Edit → Presets → tap "Yours" → three-dot menu →
  Import Presets. The import option only lives under "Yours".

No paid Lightroom plan needed.


USING IT WITH THE OTHER PACKS
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Nightfall stacks on Emulsion fine. A few things write the same setting, so
whichever you click last wins:

  · Nightfall 02 Density and Emulsion 01 Curve
  · Nightfall 05 Sources and Emulsion 02 Crossover
  · Both packs' 06 Grain
  · Emulsion 04 Glow and Nightfall 01 Air

Silver and Nightfall mostly don't mix, since Silver removes the colour
these work on. Density and grain are fine on a black and white though.


LICENCE
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Free. Use it on anything you shoot — personal, client, prints, commercial.
No attribution required, though it is always nice.

Please don't resell the files, include them in a paid bundle, re-host the
download elsewhere (link to rezaevol.com instead), or repackage them under
another name.

Provided as-is. You keep every right to the photographs you make.

© 2026 Reza Evol · rezaevol.com
