Create a Winter Wonderland

Quick reference

• 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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