How to make snow in Photoshop. The effect of snow in Photoshop: how to make

Probably, everyone who starts to master "Photoshop" is overwhelmed by the thirst for creativity, and in the head it becomes close to incredibly artistic intentions. Therefore, it is possible that when you hear, for example, the words of the song "... the snow over the tent is spinning ...", the beginner "photoshop" will immediately think: "I wonder how to make snow in Photoshop"? If quickly, but not very realistic, then this is done so.

Create white snow with "black ink"

To begin with, we find a winter composition (do not put it in the desert) and load it into the editor. Create a new layer above the background, fill it with black, changing the blending mode of this layer to "Screen". Outwardly, nothing has changed.

Set as the main white color. Open the "Filter Gallery" in the "Filter" menu and select the "Mascara" filter in the "Sketch" folder, select the optimal settings for the selected background (the length of the strokes, their direction and the tone balance).

You can also use the "Dry brush" effect from the "Imitation" filter folder, where in this case you only need to adjust the brush size, setting the value to no more than 3, so that "snowfall" is not unnaturally abundant.

Now, blur the "snow layer" with the "Gaussian Blur" filter to make the "grains" of snow become flakes, and reduce the opacity to your taste.

The first time, most likely, will not work, but if you experiment with the settings, you can achieve a decent result.

The next easy way to make a falling snow in Photoshop is essentially the same as the first, but a little more advanced than it.

Snow from the "noise"

The initial conditions remain the same, that is, the background - the winter landscape. A new layer is created above it and filled with black, but the blending mode does not change.

Open the "Filter", go to "Noise", select the command "Add noise" and expose the effect of about 150-160% (Gaussian distribution, monochrome).

Go to the "Blur" filter and blur the future snow with the "Blur +" command. This, of course, is not the most effective eraser, but in this case that's what you need.

The noise picture is now little like snow (to put it mildly), so go to "Image> Correction> Levels" and on the output values chart set the white (right) slider somewhere to 200-208, and the right one (black) to 160-165. The rest is not touched.

Now the picture resembles either the Milky Way or snow in the bright moonlight, but not the noise, but if we change the blending mode to "Screen", everything will fall into place. The black color will disappear, but the "snowflakes" will seem to you, rather, attached to the image, than falling from the sky.

To turn the white "garbage" into falling snow, in Photoshop there is a special filter "Blur in Motion", which we get into by going to "Filter> Blur", and there we will set the angle (-60) - (70) degrees, And the offset is 8-10 pixels.

Now it has become more realistic, but it looks still somewhat flat. To cause a sense of the depth of the falling snow, you need to add a new layer with larger snowflakes.

Duplicate the snow layer (Ctrl + J), rotate the copy 180 degrees ("Edit> Transform> Rotate 180"), then go to "Filter> Appearance> Crystallization". We leave the default cell size (10), as for our case this is just right, but the big snowflakes are a little angular, so go back to "Filter> Blur" and select "Blur in Motion" with an angle there (-60) - (70) degrees and a displacement of 15-18 pixels.

If it seems to you that the snow is pale, you can combine both snow layers and then create a copy of this "tandem", after which the brightness will increase, because both layers were in the "Screen" overlay mode.

Add realistic snow in "Photoshop", managing only the parameters of the overlay

This express method will not overwhelm the spring, summer or autumn landscape with snow , but the effect of its application can recall poems with the words "winter came" or pictures with this name.

Choose a landscape, the composition of which will not be greatly affected (or, perhaps, it will) if it is sprinkled with snow, and upload it to "Photoshop".

Create a new layer and fill it with white. Then double-click on the layer to open the "Blending Options" dialog box and in the "Overlay, if" section, at the bottom, divide the black slider of the lower scale (the "Layer") to the left in two parts (with the Alt key) and move them, looking at Your image, which you transform, "adding" to the landscape snow, frost, frost, and maybe even ice.

These manipulations will result in the replacement of the dark pixels of the lower layer with white ones, and the lighter pixels become pure white.

If the white turned out to be too much, you can add this mask to the layer and correct it with a soft black brush, selecting the appropriate opacity.

And now, in order to strengthen the realism of the inexorable approach of winter, you can add falling snow, using the already familiar effects described above.

Animation of falling snow

Surely many users are thinking, creating a snow effect in "Photoshop", how to make the snowflakes come to life and fall really? But like this, for example.

Choose a winter landscape, against which the snow will fall, open the picture in "Photoshop", create a new layer and fill it with white color.

Take the "Brush" and, pressing F5, open the panel of its settings. On the "Brushprint shape" tab, select the shape (for round snow, you can also download snowflakes), the size and rigidity of the smear, but the main thing is to set intervals (for falling snow it will be not less than 180-200%).

On the "Dynamics of the form" tab, adjust the size, minimum diameter and shape variations (snow is not uniform).

"Scattering" should be at least 700% and, probably, better on both axes.

Now a few sweeping strokes of the brush along the canvas will arrange a "snowfall" suitable for a particular landscape, having solved the first task (how to make snow in Photoshop), and now it is necessary to make it "fall from the sky."

Before you start creating an animation, make a copy of the snow layer, go to full-screen mode (F) and, by triggering the transformation (Ctrl + T), drag the duplicate upwards, beyond the canvas, by placing it directly above the image. Then, leaving the full-screen mode, you need to combine both snow layers.

Now let's do the "movie". Open the timeline by ticking it in the "Window" menu.

Expand the list in the center with the triangle to the right and by selecting "Create frame animation", click on the line, thus loading the first frame of the animation on the timeline.

Duplicate the frame by throwing it on the button to the left of the basket and pressing Shift, the down arrow on the keyboard moves a layer of snow on the second frame, aligning its upper edge with the top edge of the background image.

Now, pressing Ctrl, select both frames, click the "Create intermediate frames" button and add 10-15 frames (for the snow at the very time).

We play the animation to make sure it works, then select all the frames, selecting the first one and pressing the last one with the Shift key. Clicking at the bottom of any frame with the right button, set the delay to 0.1-0.2 seconds and in the line with the prompt "Selecting the cycle parameters", we specify "Permanently".

"Snowy" Brushes

At the beginning of the description of the previous method, figuring out how to make the snow in Photoshop, we had to work from scratch to create our own snow brush from scratch, but there would be nothing shameful in that we downloaded the ready-made brushes of "snowman", flakes, "Cereals" and even whole snow charges, which in the Internet are very numerous.

In this case, a chic and quite plausible snowfall can be done with one brush stroke, selecting the appropriate size and pattern.

The simplicity of this method allows you to add a new expression to the treasury of the most popular "popular" comparisons: "It's just how to make snow in Photoshop".

"Overlapped" snow

This method of "complexity" is not far from the previous one. It's about falling snow textures in PNG or JPEG formats, which are also fully freely available.

With transparent pictures everything is simple, and textures in JPEG format are inserted above the background image onto a new layer, for which you only need to change the blend mode to "Screen" or "Soft Light", and then, if necessary, reduce the opacity.