How to Create Realistic Snow Overlays with Photoshop
Make your winter shots even more wintery
This technique for Photoshop combines snowflakes, bokeh and rain to create a realistic snow overlay which can be used on photographs.
download them here.
Step 1
Open your image in Photoshop. I am using
this image from Unsplash which I have resized to 3000 x 2000 pixels to make it easier to work with.
Step 2
Start by creating two new layers and fill them both with solid black. Layer 1 is simply a background layer used to hide the photo, Layer 2 is where we will start working.
Step 3
On Layer 2 we are going to create some fine rain, go to
Filter > Mezzotint and select the Grainy Dots option then click OK.
Step 4
Next go to
Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use 95° for the Angle and 25 for the distance.
Step 5
To filter out some of the rain and make it look more realistic, open the
Image > Adjustments > Levels panel and 25, 1.00 and 255 for the Input Levels.
Step 6
Set the Opacity of the rain layer to 80% and optionally name the layer 'Rain 1'.
Step 7
Create another new layer called 'Rain 2' and fill it with solid black.
Step 8
We are going to make some heavier rain now, go to
Filter > Mezzotint again and this time use Coarse Dots.
Step 9
Go to
Filter > Blur > Motion Blur again and use 85° for the Angle this time. Having two rain layers going in slightly different directions will give the impression of there being a strong wind in the photo.
Step 10
Open the
Image > Adjustments > Levels panel again and this time use 30, 0.9 and 150 for the Input Levels.
Step 11
Set the Blending Mode of the 'Rain 2' layer to Screen.
Step 12
To make the rain look more spread out and less uniform, grab the Eraser tool and with a soft round brush at 50% Opacity and delete some sections of rain.
Step 13
Create another new layer called 'Bokeh' and fill it with solid black. On this layer we are going to create some blurry out of focus snow flakes that appear to be too close to the camera lens. Snow is very rarely captured in focus so this will add to the realism.
Step 14
For the bokeh effect, we need to create a simple scatter brush to use. Select the default soft round brush at 50 pixels and then set the following options in the Brushes panel:
Step 15
Set the foreground color to white, and use the scatter brush to fill the Bokeh layer with random dots. To achieve this effect you will need to click once with the brush then move the cursor slightly and click once again. It can be quite time consuming this way, but the result is much better than holding down the mouse button.
Step 16
Go to
Filter > Blur > Lens Blur and use the settings shown below to complete the Bokeh effect.
Step 17
Set the Blending Mode of the Bokeh layer to Screen and Opacity to 50%.
Step 18
Once again, create a new layer and fill it with solid black. Name this layer 'Flakes'. This final layer will be similar to the Bokeh layer, except in focus.
Step 19
Use the same scatter brush from step 14 and create some more random white dots.
Step 20
Go to
Filter > Filter Gallery.. and choose
Ocean Ripple. Set the Ripple Size to 1 and Magnitude to 5.
Step 21
Go to
Filter > Blur > Lens Blur again and this time use these settings shown below for a more subtle blur effect:
Step 22
Set the Blending Mode of the Flakes layer to Screen.
Step 23
Finally, group all of the layers (excluding the original image) and set the Blending Mode of the group to Screen.
Result
And here is the final result. The combination of flakes, bokeh and rain in different directions create the illusion of depth which produces a more realistic effect than most snow overlay techniques found on the web.
Download Snow Overlays for Photographs
This pack features 6 high quality overlays for adding snow to your photographs. They vary from intense snow storms to light flurries and can be toned down by using opacity or cranked up even more by layering multiple overlays on the same image. Supplied as both JPG and transparent PNG files.
Download
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