Make the Perfect Crystalline Snowflake PNG

Crystalline Snowflakes using Illustrator and Photoshop

In the winter, snowflakes are a valuable resource to have in your design toolbox. They give invitations, posters, greeting cards and seasonal websites that perfect chilly, cozy look. Today, I will show you hot to style a crystalline snowflake with a transparent background in Photoshop.

But before we start with the tutorial, you may want to download these awesome vector snowflakes that Tony did and which we will use as a base for our stylized crystalline snowflake.

Download

Step 1

Open the Vector Snowflakes you just downloaded in Illustrator.

Step 2

Select any of the 20 included snowflakes (in this case, I will select the bottom right one) and go to Edit > Copy.

Step 3

Open Photoshop and create a new file at any size you want. In this case, I will set this one to 860 x 860 px.

Step 4

Go to Edit > Paste. Select the ‘Smart Object’ option and click OK.

Step 5

In the top toolbar, set the scale of the Width and Height to 350% and click on the checkmark to commit the changes.

Step 6

With the snowflake layer active, go to Filter > Noise > Median. Set the Radius to 5 px and click OK.

Step 7

Go to Layer > Layer Style > Bevel & Emboss and apply the following settings:

Step 8

Check the ‘Texture’ option under Bevel & Emboss.

Step 9

Click on the Pattern thumbnail and then on the gear icon at top right. From the dropdown menu select ‘Rock Patterns’.

Step 10

From the new loaded textures, select the ‘Textured Tile’, and set the Scale to 50%.

Step 11

Still in the Layer Style window, check the ‘Inner Glow’ option and apply the following settings:

Step 12

Now check the ‘Outer Glow’ option and apply the following settings:

Step 13

Click on ‘Blending Options’, bring down the Fill Opacity to 0% and click OK.

Step 14

In the Layers Panel, hide the Background layer by clicking on the eye icon next to the layer’s name.

Step 15

Go to File > Save for Web. From the ‘Preset’ dropdown menu select ‘PNG-24’ and click the ‘Save’ button to save the .PNG file of the snowflake to any location on your computer with a transparent background.