Snow Covered Text Effect

Quick reference

• 00:00 Hello everyone. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, or nothing at all,
• 00:04 there's a good chance you'll be making some sort of winter decoration this year.
• 00:08 And what says winter better than snow? Let's go ahead and add some snow to the
• 00:12 candy cane text, which we created
• 00:14 not too long ago.
• 00:18 For this process, we're going to be creating a
• 00:22 custom brush
• 00:23 and then painting on a layer with a few layer styles. Let's start with the brush.
• 00:28 In your Tools bar on the left, grab your Brush tool.
• 00:31 Don't worry too much about the initial brush, as we're going to be customizing it
• 00:34 to fit this project.
• 00:35 If your brush panel is not visible on the right side your work space, which it
• 00:39 probably won't be,
• 00:40 head up to the Window menu and then down to brush. This panel will allow us to
• 00:45 customize
• 00:46 every aspect of our brush in order to get the results that we are looking for.
• 00:49 Let's start in the ‘brush tip shape’ section. In terms of the size of the brush,
• 00:53 it really depends on the area that you're going to be working with.
• 00:56 I'm going to start with a 40 pixel brush, which can be easily adjusted later on.
• 01:00 At the bottom, we only want to change the hardness and the spacing.
• 01:04 Set the harness at 60% and the spacing all the way to the left.
• 01:08 1% is as low as you can go. Popping into the ‘shape dynamics’ section,
• 01:12 the only setting that we want to adjust is the size jitter.
• 01:15 Make sure that it is all the way to 100%, as this will help create clumps of
• 01:19 snow throughout the design.
• 01:20 Everything else should be set to ‘off’ or 0%.
• 01:24 And lastly, let's add a texture to our brush. As you might guess, this will help add
• 01:28 fluffiness to the edges of our brush.
• 01:30 In the drop-down list of the patterns, find and select the clouds pattern.
• 01:34 If, by chance, you don't see that pattern available, click on the arrow at the top
• 01:38 right corner of this window.
• 01:39 Select patterns and then choose ‘append’ to add those patterns to the list.
• 01:43 Once you have the patterns selected, turn the scale up to 200%,
• 01:46 and depth at 70%.
• 01:50 Now, it's time to brush in our snow. Go ahead and create a new layer in your Layers
• 01:55 panel.
• 01:55 Starting with the 40 pixel brush, I'm creating the large clumps of
• 01:59 snow around the top of the text.
• 02:01 And then, using my square bracket keys, I can increase or decrease the size of the
• 02:05 brush.
• 02:05 The left square bracket will decrease the brush, while the right square bracket
• 02:09 key
• 02:10 will increase it. It might be a good idea to incrementally decrease the brush
• 02:13 as the snow is coming to an end. At this point, our snow shape is complete, but it
• 02:17 doesn't really look like snow, it just looks like
• 02:19 white clumps. We need to add some layer styles to give it some depth.
• 02:23 Let's start with a drop shadow, to pull the snow slightly away from the text.
• 02:27 As we don't want anything too overpowering, decrease the opacity to 30
• 02:31 %,
• 02:32 turn off global light and set the angle at 90 degrees.
• 02:35 Set the distance at 2 and the size at 3.
• 02:39 This will give us a nice, subtle shadow under our snow. Next, we're going to add an
• 02:43 inner shadow to give depth to the snow. The color of the shadow is up to you, but I found a
• 02:48 nice blue works well.
• 02:50 I can use the value 30 65 c7.
• 02:53 Decreasing the opacity to 50% will blend it
• 02:57 really nicely. You'll also want to make sure to turn off global light, and set the
• 03:01 angle at 90 degrees as well.
• 03:03 Now, at the bottom, increase the distance to 6 and the size to 8,
• 03:06 in order to soften up the shadow. Now, as always, if you're working with a
• 03:10 larger or smaller document, you'll definitely need to tweak the layer
• 03:14 styles to get the results you're looking for.
• 03:16 Next, we're going to add a slight pattern overlay to add some clumps to this design.
• 03:20 In the patterns drop-down, select the clouds pattern once again.
• 03:23 Now, to blend the pattern with our snow, change the blend mode
• 03:27 tool to linear burn, the opacity to 15%,
• 03:30 and then decrease the scale to around 50%. And that should do it.
• 03:34 As we created the snow from a brush and layer styles, you can now tweak it
• 03:37 however you like.
• 03:38 If you want to have a little fun with your snow, go ahead and add a satin.
• 03:41 Decrease the opacity to 15%, increase the distance
• 03:45 and size a little bit, and then change the color to yellow.

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