Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Add a special effect to text for the holidays, or the effect of snow to photos or illustrations. Can be used to make snowballs, snowmen and clouds.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic
Customizing a brush tool to add layers of clumped snow to existing image.
When to use
Add a special effect to text for the holidays, or the effect of snow to photos or illustrations. Could be used to make snowballs, snowmen, and clouds.
Instructions
Customising the Brush and creating the snow effect
- Grab the custom brush on the left. Open the brush panel from the window menu. Select brush tip shape and start with 40px size. Set hardness to 60% and spacing to 1%.
- In Shape dynamics section set size jitter to 100% and everything else off. In texture section find and select the clouds pattern and set scale to 200%, mode to Linear Burn and Jitter depth to 70%.
- Create a new layer and rough in large clumps of snow. Use Square bracket keys to decrease and increase brush size.
Changing the layer look and adding depth to the snow
- In the layer style add a drop shadow (opacity 30%, global light off and set angle to 90%, distance 2, size 3).
- Add an inner shadow (set colour to 3065c7, opacity 50%, global light off and set angle to 90%, distance 6, size 8)
- Add a Pattern Overlay (Select clouds pattern again and Linear burn, opacity 15%, scale 50%)
Tip
For extra tweaks play with the satin section.
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- 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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