Winter photographs are slightly different from photographs taken at other times of the year. Falling snow or snowdrifts in the background add coziness to the image. But thanks to the Photoshop photo editor, you can get a “snowy” photo at any time of the year.
Photo Editing: How to Add Snow in Photoshop?
The possibilities of Photoshop are almost endless. The proper use of layers, brushes and filters can breathe a second life into even the most unfortunate photo. You can add snow in Photoshop in several ways. It all depends on the wishes of the customer.
The easiest way to add snow to Photoshop is with brushes. It’s a little more difficult to fix static snow on the photo, for this you need to work with filters and noise.
And the most difficult way is to add falling snow for Photoshop. Most of the work will be devoted to creating animations.
Download and install brushes for Photoshop
Brushes are one of the most useful features of a graphics editor. Finding them is not difficult. It’s enough to drive the necessary topics into the search: snow, leaves, birds, Christmas and so on. In a few seconds, the search engine will give you an extensive list of suitable options. The user only has to choose a suitable brush and download it.
The next step is to set the brushes. To do this, open "Photoshop" and click on the "Brushes" icon. Next, open the list of brushes, select "Settings" and "Load Brushes". New templates will be uploaded and available for use.
Adding snow with brushes
Now it remains only to apply brushes for Photoshop. Snow can turn out in the form of light precipitation or become a real storm in the picture.
In order to add snow in Photoshop, you must open the original photo. Next, you need to select one of the predefined brushes. The next step is to draw snow on the image.
To make the snow as realistic as possible, the user is given the opportunity to change the size of the brush and its vector.
Animated snow
Static snow is not suitable for animated pictures. To create dynamic snow in Photoshop, you will need to spend more time.
First you need to open the original photo or image. Next, select the Brush tool and go to the palette by pressing the F5 key. Then click on the menu “Shape and prints of the brush” and change the settings:
- size - 5 pixels;
- angle - 0 degrees;
- intervals are 75 percent.
In the “Size Fluctuation” tab:
- size variation - 100 percent;
- form fluctuations - 4 percent;
- the minimum form is 25 percent.
In the Dispersion tab:
- meter fluctuations - 25 percent.
Then, on a new layer, white snow is created in Photoshop. The next step is to create a copy of the snow layer. Then, a copy of the layer must be raised so that the lower edge of the copied layer is flush with the upper snow layer. This is followed by the selection of both layers using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + E.
Adding Animation
After the user has completed the task of making snow in Photoshop, it remains to add animation to the image. To do this, you need to go to the animation window, which is located in the "Window" - "Timeline" menu.
An animation window will appear at the bottom of the graphics editor. The first step to create dynamic snow is to click on the Create Timeline for Video button. After that, the first slide will appear in the window. Then you need to:
- create a copy of the first slide in the animation window;
- click on the second slide;
- drag the upper snow layer in the image a little lower, so that only a small edge is visible;
- select two resulting slides and click "Create intermediate frames".
In the window that appears, change the settings:
- add frames - 20;
- layers - all layers;
- layer attributes - position, opacity and effects.
Applying the settings will create twenty intermediate slides with animated snow. In order for the resulting animation to be cyclical and not interrupted, you must delete the last slide. In the animation window, you can adjust the speed of "fall" of snow. It is enough to change the duration of each slide.
To save the resulting image, you need to open the "File" menu and select "Save for web". In the “Photoshop” version of the SS, this function was moved to “File” - “Export”. When saving, you will need to select the GIF format.
The noise filter and adding snow
You can create snow without using brushes for Photoshop. Snow will look realistic if you use the Noise filter correctly.
First you need to load the original image into the graphics editor. Then you need to create a new layer and use the Fill tool to paint it black. Further it is necessary:
- go to the "Filters" tab;
- select “Noise” from the list;
- in the window that opens, click on “Add noise”.
In the filter settings, change:
- amount - 400 percent;
- add “Gaussian”;
- turn on "Monochrome".
After the appearance of the noise changes:
- transition to "Filters";
- the choice of the item "Blur";
- Click on "Gaussian"
- in the window, resize to two pixels.
To create snow islands you will need:
- go to the “Image” menu;
- select “Correction”;
- click on “Brightness / Contrast”.
Then it is necessary to change the brightness and contrast values until the desired result is achieved. And finally, you need to impose a "snow" layer on the image. To do this, click on the “snow” layer and change the blending mode to “Lighten”. Black color will become transparent, snow will fall on the photo. Next - save the file.
So, there are several ways to solve the problem of how to make snow in Photoshop, using brushes, animations and filters.