Create light with two layers of different levels Photoshop CC 2015

First, car lights don’t show in the same way as your example. What is missing from your test is some perspective but also the lights need to be out of the frame of the picture, and higher. Right now your lights are on the road (eg. really on the ground!)

I don’t know if this is the effect you’re looking for, but here is what I did to get to this without spending much more than 5-10 minutes. By playing with the blending mode and layers, you can probably get something even more realistic.

1) I took your first picture and merged it with a sky picture. I simply used a gradient on a layer mask to soften the sky in the horizon. It’s faster than adjusting the whole picture and sky but you don’t need to do this if you want to keep your original sky.

2) I added a layer in multiply with a darker blue/black and a little transparency to make the sky darker. (See last image to see my layers)

3) I traced 2 rectangles and then used the free transform to “flatten” them on the road.

Tip: Use “free transform” (command + T) and then hold the “command” key to move each corner of your shape freely.

4) I added some layer mask on these rectangle and a gradient on the top going towards the bottom. Then some gaussian blur on the main layer.

5) Then I added some gradients on 2 other layers with a light yellow with a lot of white in it. One layer has an opacity of about 85% with overlay, the other with soft light.

And here is how it looks like. You can play around these effect, change the color of your light and sky, make everything darker, etc. It’s up to you. No need to use any filter for this.

If you want less light, just lower the transparency of your layers. My image has bright lights.

If you want the lines on the road to be less “milky”, you can copy your layers with the road, use a layer mask to hide the road and keep the lines… and put that layer on top of all the “light” layers in hard light blending or overlay, or whatever seems best to you.

Edit: You can use the wand tool with a 64 tolerance, and select the yellow and white lines of your road, if you want a quick way to do this.

Edit: If you don’t need a new sky, you can simply use a layer with a dark color applied with a gradient from 100% at the top to 0% in the middle of your road… and put it in multiply blending mode.

This way you’ll keep some luminosity on your road but you’ll still have that night effect on the horizon. Adjust the transparency of that layer or change the blending mode to see what you prefer.