Locked lesson.
About this lesson
This is a great tutorial for learning how to transform images: selecting grass and turning it snow, and adding a cool filter to the image.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic
Add snow and a frosty feel to your photographs.
When to use
This is a great tutorial for learning how to transform images: selecting grass and turning it snow, and adding a cool filter to the image.
Instructions
Basics
- Load image
- Duplicate image (edit the duplicate only): Command- or Control-J shortcut
Select the grass
- Menu: Select/Color Range
- Use the eyedropper tool
- To add to the selection, hold on your Shift key and click on the other colors that you want to include
- Click OK to accept selection
- Press the Layer Mask icon
Turn the grass into snow
- Click on the Adjustment Layer icon: Hue and Saturation
- Clip it to the selection
- Shift saturation until grass is brown color
- Add another Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer
- Clip it to the selection again
- Increase the lightness to 100%
Add a photo filter
- Load: Photo Filter Adjustment Layer.
- Click on filter setting and select the Cooling Filter
Add falling snow with a custom brush
- Create a new layer
- Move it below the photo filter layer
- Bring up the Brush Tool (shortcut B), and the Brush Editor (Window Menu)
- Brush tip shape section: Spacing to 175%
- Shape dynamics: increase the size jitter, increase the roundness jitter, Count Value: 4
- Texture: clouds
- Paint snow flakes in three sizes for a layered look
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- 00:04 Hi everybody, Howard Pinsky here with the first of many
- 00:07 holiday-themed Photoshop tutorials for you guys. In this video we’re going to
- 00:11 attempt to take this
- 00:12 ordinary photo and turn it into a winter wonderland.
- 00:15 We're going to do this using a selection method, adjustment layers
- 00:19 and a custom brush, and hopefully at the end of it,
- 00:22 we're going to have a great looking result. Let's jump right into it.
- 00:25 The first thing that I want to do is to make sure this project is as
- 00:29 non-destructive as possible,
- 00:31 meaning I can always go back and make edits to it later on if needed
- 00:35 First, I need to duplicate my background layer. I can very easily do that
- 00:39 with my Command or Control J shortcut -
- 00:42 Command on Mac, Control on Windows - and you'll notice
- 00:45 in the layers panel, we now have two layers: the original background layer
- 00:49 and our new layer 1. Now this layer, the layer 1,
- 00:53 is the layer we're going to make our first selection on, which will be a
- 00:56 selection of all the greens in the image.
- 00:59 Now there are a few ways to isolate certain colors in your images,
- 01:02 but my favorite method is color range. You can find color range
- 01:06 under the Select menu at the top of your workspace, and just go down to color
- 01:10 range.
- 01:11 Now, this is how color range works: you do have the option of selecting specific
- 01:15 colors,
- 01:16 but these rely on pure colors, so if I select greens,
- 01:20 it's looking for pure greens in my photo. But the problem is, most of the greens in
- 01:24 the photo are off greens.
- 01:26 They're kind of yellow, they're kind of blue. They have different colors in them:
- 01:29 they're not pure.
- 01:30 So these colors won't work, we need to select sampled colors,
- 01:34 and we can do that just by using the eyedropper tool. We can click on the
- 01:38 green that we want selected.
- 01:39 You'll notice that it turns white. Everything in white will be a selection,
- 01:44 and everything black will not be selected. And that's determined by the
- 01:48 fuzziness slider at the top.
- 01:50 If I pulled the slider to the right, Photoshop will include more similar
- 01:54 greens in my selection.
- 01:56 If I pull it to the left, it will exclude green, and only select the green that I
- 02:00 sampled.
- 02:01 So let me put it back to around seventy, and if I want to include additional greens
- 02:05 in my selection, you'll notice down here in the bottom-up preview,
- 02:08 not all of these greens have been selected, I can hold on my Shift key on
- 02:12 the keyboard
- 02:13 and I can click on the additional green colors.
- 02:17 So you notice in the preview, more greens are now being selected.
- 02:20 So I'm going to make sure that the greens in the roof are being selected,
- 02:23 and then I’ll adjust my fuzziness just to get the result that I'm looking for.
- 02:28 I'm going to keep it around seventy and press OK.
- 02:32 Now you're going to notice that the selection is crazy,
- 02:35 because it’s basically selected all of those greens that we had chosen
- 02:39 in the color range window. So how do we isolate these?
- 02:42 Well, because we're using a separate layer, we can very easily go to the
- 02:45 bottom of the layers panel
- 02:47 and press the layer mask icon. So now we have a layer,
- 02:50 layer 1, that contains only the grass, so if I go ahead and move it around, you'll see
- 02:55 only the greens are selected.
- 02:56 Now it may not be a perfect selection, but as you're going to see a little bit
- 02:59 later on,
- 03:00 because we're using a layer mask, we can always go back and make changes to that
- 03:05 mask if needed.
- 03:06 And that will be a huge help, and you'll see how that works a little bit later on.
- 03:10 But, now what we need to do is we need to take this green and make it white.
- 03:13 Now, again, there's a lot of ways we can do this.
- 03:17 But I've been experimenting with a few ways, and I think I've got a semi-realistic
- 03:20 way of doing this.
- 03:21 The first thing we're going to do is we're going to add an adjustment layer
- 03:25 that will convert this green into brown, because obviously in the winter,
- 03:28 the grass dies and it turns kind of brown. So to do that, we're going to go to the
- 03:33 bottom of the layers panel,
- 03:34 click on the adjustment layer icon, and add a hue and saturation adjustment
- 03:38 layer.
- 03:38 I'll click on that, and we want to clip it to the layer right below, so we'll
- 03:42 press this button right here.
- 03:44 I will make sure that nothing else is affected except the green of the grass.
- 03:47 Now once that's done, we're going to shift the hue and saturation until
- 03:52 we get a nice brown color.
- 03:54 So we'll shift it to the left - now that's obviously a little bit too far - I'll go back
- 03:59 right around there, and we're going to decrease the saturation.
- 04:02 So we have, more or less, a brown color instead of green,
- 04:06 which is a little bit more accurate if it is, in fact, in the winter.
- 04:09 So, now that that's done, we need to turn this white and we're going to
- 04:13 add another hue and saturation adjustment layer.
- 04:16 Again, click on the adjustment layer icon and select hue and saturation.
- 04:20 Make sure to clip it so we don't affect anything else, and this time we're going to
- 04:24 increase the lightness all the way up to 100%.
- 04:28 Now you're probably wondering if we just increase the lightness to 100%
- 04:31 and covered everything else, why do we do that?
- 04:33 Well, if you do decide later on that you don't want everything
- 04:36 covered in snow,
- 04:38 you can easily modify the layer mask to allow some of the bottom color to come
- 04:42 through.
- 04:43 And realistically, it wouldn't be green, even though we have some green back here,
- 04:47 but don't pay attention to that.
- 04:48 If some of the snow lifted from the foreground, you probably wouldn't see
- 04:52 green, you would see brown and dead grass.
- 04:55 So the brown hue and saturation adjustment layer is there in case you
- 04:58 need it.
- 04:59 You may not need it, but you may need it later on, and if you're looking for a
- 05:02 realistic look,
- 05:04 chances are you won't find green under that snow.
- 05:07 Now, the next thing you want to add to make this image a little bit more
- 05:09 realistic is a photo filter.
- 05:10 Right now, the image is looking a little bit warm, so we need to
- 05:15 cool it down.
- 05:15 We can do that by using a photo filter adjustment layer.
- 05:19 Now, when you first add a photo filter adjustment layer, it’s going to give you
- 05:22 a warming filter.
- 05:23 Now that's the opposite of what we actually want, so we can click on filter
- 05:27 up at the top
- 05:28 and choose a cooling filter. And if you need to, you can increase the density to
- 05:31 cool it down even more.
- 05:32 I'll leave it around 35%, right around there.
- 05:36 And now that's a lot cooler than it was before.
- 05:40 So now, we have snow on the ground which we're going to make look a little bit
- 05:43 better a little bit later on,
- 05:44 and we have a cooling filter to make the whole scene look a little bit colder.
- 05:48 The last thing we're going to add is snow, and we're going to do that using a
- 05:52 custom brush.
- 05:54 So, to start, we'll create a new layer right down here at the bottom of the layers
- 05:57 panel,
- 05:57 and I'm going to move it right below the photo filter, so that the cooling
- 06:00 filter can affect the falling snow as well.
- 06:03 And then I’m going to make sure I'm using a white brush, I'll set my foreground
- 06:07 color,
- 06:07 and I'm going to grab my brush tool by pressing the letter B on my keyboard.
- 06:11 And if I right click, I can bring up my brush picker.
- 06:15 I want to make sure to start with a nice, soft brush.
- 06:16 Now, once that's done, we need to edit our brush,
- 06:19 and to do that, we need to bring up our brush editor - that can be found under
- 06:23 the Window menu, and then click on brush.
- 06:24 And here's the brush editor over here, on the side.
- 06:28 We're going to start in the ‘brush tip shape’ section,
- 06:32 the only setting we're going to change will be spacing.
- 06:35 I'm going to increase this to around 175%,
- 06:39 right around there. Now, once that's done, we're going over to ‘shape dynamics’.
- 06:42 This will allow us to randomize the snowflakes as we are brushing them in on
- 06:46 our scene.
- 06:47 I can increase the size jitter - you'll notice that when the size jitter is at 0%,
- 06:51 all of the snowflakes
- 06:51 are about the same size, but when I increase them,
- 06:55 they become randomized. And I'm going to do the same thing for the roundness jitter -
- 06:59 instead of having them all perfectly round, it would be nice to have some of them
- 07:03 oval-shaped, just like that. And then we're going to go into scattering
- 07:07 over here, and we're going to make sure to crank up scattering. We want to have snowflakes all
- 07:11 over the place.
- 07:12 The count value controls how many snowflakes you need to brush stroke.
- 07:15 I'll reduce it a little bit, somewhere around three or four, right there.
- 07:18 And the last thing we’re going to add is a texture.
- 07:22 Now, I do have the clouds texture selected, but you can use any texture that
- 07:25 you want,
- 07:26 and I a turn down the scale just a little bit.
- 07:29 Brightness looks OK. I'll keep it a little bit lower. And you should have a little bit
- 07:33 of a textured look to your snowflakes now.
- 07:35 And now we're ready to start painting in the snowflakes.
- 07:38 Now we're going to be doing this in three steps: one for the background
- 07:42 snowflakes, which are going to be nice and small;
- 07:44 one for the middle, which can be a little bit bigger.; and one for the foreground, which
- 07:47 should be all up in our face.
- 07:49 So for the background snowflakes, I'll decrease my brush size by pressing
- 07:52 the square bracket key,
- 07:53 and I'm simply going to start brushing in snowflakes.
- 08:00 You'll notice that you can probably see them - they're all randomized, they
- 08:04 look pretty nice.
- 08:07 You can probably hear my Wacom Tablet scribbling along.
- 08:13 Let me go ahead and close the brush editor, so you can see what's going on. We have a
- 08:16 bunch of
- 08:16 little snowflakes all in the background. Now we'll do the same thing, but increase
- 08:20 the brush size, so use
- 08:22 the right square bracket. That will increase the brush size. I'm going to make a
- 08:25 new layer in
- 08:26 the bottom of the layers panel. I am simply going to
- 08:29 brush some bigger snowflakes. Not as many as I did before,
- 08:33 but just a few in the foreground. And now, one more time;: 173 00:08:37,099 --> 00:08:40,110 one more new layer and I'll make the brush even bigger.
- 08:40 I'm only going to put a few just right in the foreground,
- 08:44 right up in my face, and if you want, you can always go back to - let's say the
- 08:46 middle layer -
- 08:47 and turn down the opacity a little bit if they're too intense.
- 08:51 Right around there: perfect. So just to see where we're at,
- 08:55 I'll go ahead and group all these layers.
- 08:58 And here's the before, and here's the after.
- 09:02 Now I am looking at the snow, and it's not looking perfect. So what I'll do, because
- 09:06 we're working non-destructively,
- 09:08 because we made that selection on a new layer with a layer mask,
- 09:11 I can easily click on the layer mask, go in to ‘mask
- 09:14 edge’ and then modify that layer mask if I need to.
- 09:18 One cool feature is ‘shift edge’, especially in a situation like this.
- 09:22 Basically, if I decrease shift edge, it’s going to remove some of the snow.
- 09:25 And if I increase it, it’s going to add a whole lot of snow, so it's a lot more
- 09:29 overpowering.
- 09:30 Now it's looking a little bit sharp, so what you can do is either use
- 09:34 smooth or feather to increase the blurriness.
- 09:35 So, look what happens when I increase the feathering
- 09:39 by only .4 pixels.
- 09:41 I can fine tune this as much as I want, but you'll notice that it's no
- 09:45 longer sharp.
- 09:46 It's nice and soft, just like snow should be. And again, you can go down and play
- 09:49 with the shift edge
- 09:51 if you want to remove some snow, add some snow, you can really play with the
- 09:54 blending to get the exact result you're looking for.
- 09:58 I'm leaving it right around there, and I'm going to press OK. You can see just by
- 10:02 editing that mask, a few small changes can make a huge difference.
- 10:06 Especially when it comes to the sharpness of that snow. We didn't want it too
- 10:09 sharp, so we feathered it a little bit and it looks a lot better now, it looks a little bit more
- 10:13 realistic.
- 10:14 And you can even jump back in there and feather even more if you want to.
- 10:17 Now, the final thing that I like adding to my designs, and sometimes it works,
- 10:21 sometimes it doesn't,
- 10:22 is a curves adjustment layer. I found that sometimes it sharpens up the image
- 10:26 a little bit, to really make the image standout.
- 10:28 So I'll simply add a point right in the middle. I'm going to sharpen up the shadows,
- 10:32 as a little bit
- 10:33 may be increased by the highlights. Play around with the mid-tone.
- 10:37 I can always turn the curves adjustment on and off, just to see if that works for me.
- 10:41 It kind of works, it kind of doesn't work, so I'll decrease the opacity a little bit so
- 10:44 it's not as sharp.
- 10:46 But that's pretty much it. Again here's, the before
- 10:49 and here's the after. Not a bad job for a few simple selections and a few
- 10:53 adjustment layers.
- 10:54 And I'm sure if you guys really take the time to modify that mask, you can get
- 10:58 some amazing results.
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