Part 2 of our beautiful steamy street composite
You can create realistic headlights through the smoke using the Lens Flare filter. Create a circular selection and fill it with black. Go to Filter>Render>Lens Flare and choose 105mm Prime type. Centre the flare into the circular shape and desaturate after you place it in your desired position.
After adding the lens flare to the circular shape, switch the blend mode to Screen and position the flare over the car headlights. Create the headlights of the other cars by duplicating and resizing the layer as needed. Group all related layers.
Add more light effects to the scene using the brush tool. We used a big soft brush to paint with white over the neon panels in the background. If you think this effect is too strong, experiment with decreasing the Opacity from 100%.
In order to create the light for the streetlamps, we used the same technique as when we made the headlights for the cars. Simply duplicate that layer a few times more and resize as needed.
To finish, use a Gradient Map adjustment layer to add subtle colour to the overall image. Use a dark blue to white gradient and the Overlay blend mode at 35% Opacity.