Let's Get Digital Photo Art lesson 7:  Creating Snow

As we are located in Bangkok, we get home sick from time to time.  Missing the freshness of the very first snow  made us sit behind our machines to find a way how to create virtual snow in Bangkok with Photoshop. Even if your location allows you to take a real picture of snow sometimes you may need it in middle of July and there is no way to wait another 5 month. Here is our recipe:

Of course it is hard to turn a midsummer blue sky picture  into a winter scene. If you choose your original picture make sure that the light situation will be suitable to your final work. Here I've chosen a overcast light situation. 1.) The red colors in my original are too strong for a winter scene - I want  to decrease saturation in my red part of the image. Image-> Adjust-> Hue/Saturation, chose only the red tones by selecting "Reds" from the popup menu and decrease saturation.   2.) To get a more realistic look I let some snow fall on the roof and in the garden. With my lasso tool I select first a part of the garden and the roof - feather this selection to get a soft edge for my snow later.   3.) I create a new layer for my selection and fill it with white color. This new layer I call "snow 1" and change the layer mode to "screen". 4.) Here I used the "Add noise" filter to get a grainy structure into the white parts. Opacity is set down to 60% - so parts of the original surface become visible. 5.) What we need now are very fine snow flakes - like snow appears from a distance. I create a new layer and fill it with white color again. Apply  "Add noise" filter, set the layer to "Screen" mode and decrease the opacity to 30%. 6.) To create a dimensional impression of the falling snow I want to make big flakes falling in front of smaller ones. What I do is --> copy my layer with the fine snow and go to Edit --> Transform --> Numeric scale 600% and constrain  proportions. Set opacity to 50%.   7.) Snow is falling - so it needs some movement. Go Filter --> Blur --> Motion blur.   8.)For a final adjustment I want to increase the contrast of my big snow flakes. Image--> Adjust--> Level. Here is our final picture. This is how we let snow fall in Bangkok. Go ahead and try yourself.

All images and text are property of Lenscape Workshops . Abe Rafiq  Managing Director of Lenscape Workshops Ltd. URL: http://www.lenscape.com/