Carve a Heart into Snow

Quick reference

• 00:04 So, today we're going to take a boring image of snow
• 00:07 and give it a little love. The first thing we need to do is create our shape.
• 00:12 You're free to use any shape that you wish, but for the sake of Valentines Day,
• 00:15 we're going to use a heart.
• 00:16 Lucky for us, Adobe has included a preset heart in Photoshop.
• 00:20 In your Tools bar, grab your custom shape tool and then at the top under
• 00:24 the Options bar,
• 00:25 look for the heart shape using the shape finder. If you don't see the heart as one
• 00:28 of the options,
• 00:29 you may need to load in some additional shapes. You should now have
• 00:33 two heart shapes at your disposal. When you decide which one to use,
• 00:36 drag out your shape on your document. Don't worry too much about the colors, as we are
• 00:40 going to be adding a gradient shortly.
• 00:42 Now, if you choose, you can also enter free transform by using your
• 00:45 Command or Control T shortcut,
• 00:47 and then rotate to shape a little bit to stray away from a dead-on angle.
• 00:50 At this point, we need to add snow around the edges of the heart.
• 00:54 To do this, we're going to create a custom brush. Using a custom brush has
• 00:58 many advantages.
• 00:59 One: it’s completely customizable. And two: it’s going to save us from tedious masking.
• 01:03 To save us a little bit to work, we're going to start with a Photoshop
• 01:07 preset brush.
• 01:07 After you've selected your brush tool, under the brush picker,
• 01:11 select a brush with stippled edges. Photoshop has many of these, but if
• 01:15 you're following along,
• 01:16 I'm starting off with the 59 pixel spatter brush.
• 01:19 Once your brush is selected, it's time to customize. As with any brush
• 01:23 customization, we need to reveal the brush panel.
• 01:25 This can be activated under the Window menu at the top of your
• 01:29 workspace.
• 01:30 Now that the brush panel’s open, let's go to some settings, starting with the ‘brush
• 01:33 tip shape’ section.
• 01:35 For now, we're going to keep the size at 59 pixels, and then make sure that spacing
• 01:39 down at the bottom is set to 1%.
• 01:40 Hopping into ‘shape dynamics’, we’re going to increase in size
• 01:44 the angle and the roundness jitter, all to 100%.
• 01:48 This will give us nice variation in the snow surrounding the heart.
• 01:51 Also, make sure that the minimum values are set to 0%,
• 01:55 and the control options are off. Next, onto ‘scattering’: turn on both axis,
• 02:01 set the scatter at 55% and the count
• 02:04 at one. This will allow the snow to stray away from the single path that
• 02:08 we're going to use.
• 02:09 And finally, let's add a texture. Under the pattern picker, select the clouds
• 02:14 pattern.
• 02:14 If you don't see that pattern available, just like with are shapes, you might have
• 02:17 to load in some additional patterns.
• 02:19 The clouds pattern is available under the pattern set.
• 02:23 Once the clouds pattern is selected, set the scale at 130%,
• 02:27 the depth at 70%, and then change the mode to subtract.
• 02:30 At this point, your brush is complete.
• 02:34 If you want to save your brush for future use, select a new brush preset
• 02:37 option from the drop-down menu at the top right corner of the brush panel.
• 02:41 Now, we can start applying this brush to our design. There are few ways to go
• 02:44 about doing this,
• 02:45 but I think the most non-destructive way to do so would be to add a layer mask to
• 02:49 our shape,
• 02:50 and then paint around the edges, which will give us the illusion that snow has
• 02:53 fallen onto the shape.
• 02:54 At the bottom of your layers panel, click on the ‘add a mask’ button to
• 02:58 apply a blank layer mask to your shape.
• 03:00 Once that's done, we need to make sure that our shape's path is active.
• 03:04 Depending on the color of your shape, you may or may not be able to visibly see
• 03:08 the path.
• 03:08 If you take a look at the vector mask thumbnail in your layers panel, 65 00:03:12,489 --> 00:03:15,590 you should see a broken frame around each corner.
• 03:15 This indicates that the path is active. If you don't see this frame,
• 03:19 click on the vector mask to activate it. Once the path is
• 03:22 activated, we need to stroke the path. I mean to stroke the path,
• 03:26 which basically means we're going to tell Photoshop to paint airbrush
• 03:29 completely around our shape.
• 03:31 The long way of doing this would be to grab your pen tool,
• 03:35 right click on the path to stroke path,
• 03:38 make sure that brush is the tool selected, ‘simulate pressure’ is off
• 03:42 and press OK. But that's a hassle.
• 03:46 A quick way of doing all these steps is: with your brush tool
• 03:50 active, simply press the Return or Enter key on your keyboard.
• 03:53 I can apply to stroke two or three times to ensure that the border the shape gets
• 03:57 nicely covered.
• 03:58 Once you've applied the stroke a few times, increase the size your brush by
• 04:02 pressing your right square bracket key a few times.
• 04:04 And then apply two more strokes by pressing Return or Enter.
• 04:07 Continue this process until you're happy with the way the mask is looking.
• 04:11 I'm going to stop around 125 pixels, to avoid losing too much quality on my brush.
• 04:16 Clicking on the vector mask in your layers panel will hide the path, allowing
• 04:19 you to see the border of your shape.
• 04:21 If there are any areas that look too sharp, decrease the size of your brush
• 04:25 and paint over those leftover bits. It's looking quite nice, but we need to add a
• 04:29 few layer styles.
• 04:30 For one, add the gradient and two, add a bit of an edge to the snow.
• 04:34 Let's start with a gradient overlay. This will be a super simple gradient.
• 04:39 Before editing the gradient, set your angle at 90 degrees.
• 04:42 As for the gradient's color, the left color will be the lighter of the two.
• 04:46 I can use 13 7F E4 for the value.
• 04:51 The right color will be the darker one: 08 23 63.
• 04:54 Good, the gradient is complete.
• 04:58 Next will be the bevel and emboss. This will give a little bit of an edge to our
• 05:02 snow.
• 05:03 For the structure, set the style to emboss, the direction to down
• 05:08 and the size to 24. Down under shading,
• 05:12 turn off global light and change the altitude to 60 degrees.
• 05:15 The angle could be left at 120. Because we're going to deal with the highlight
• 05:20 of the snow using a drop shadow,
• 05:21 turn this value down to zero. For the shadow, turn the opacity up to 100%
• 05:27 and then choose a medium blue for the color. I'll use the value 1B 61 B0.
• 05:31 That should leave you leave with a nice dark edge.
• 05:35 Now, we need to add a slight light edge with the drop shadow.
• 05:40 Because we're looking for a highlight, rather than a shadow, set the blend mode
• 05:43 to overlay,
• 05:45 set your color to a pure white and then change the opacity
• 05:48 to 100%. Down below, set the distance at 10
• 05:53 and the size at five. And that should do it. Now, if you want to get
• 05:56 really fancy, you can bring in additional textures to fill in the middle of the heart.
• 06:01 Once you place your picture on top in the shape, right click on the layer in
• 06:04 the layers panel,
• 06:05 and create a clipping mask. If the texture disappears, which it probably
• 06:09 will,
• 06:09 turning off the greedy overlay should expose that texture.
• 06:13 If you want to get really fancy-schmancy, grab an image,
• 06:16 clip it, set the blend mode to screen and decrease your opacity a little bit.
• 06:21 Add a basic white stroke and a drop shadow to finish it off.

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