DIY Photography

Your one stop shop for everything photo-video

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

No Snow? No Problem! This tip will let you create a snowy paradise anywhere!

Dec 11, 2016 by Joseph Parry 4 Comments

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

thumb

Photo Credit: Clinton Lofthouse

I had a few minutes today to run through this cool idea to turn previous season shots into a snowy place of glory! It came to me after a friend asked to buy some background plates from me for a snowy shoot that I did recently.

To save money I now have a suggestion that you guys can try!

It’s quick, dirty, and will take a few tries to get it right. But I think once stacked you can make a pretty convincing difference from a snow-less scene etc!

I’ve added curves here to start us off with a “cooler” temperature, I suggest you guys work with less warm files if you can! You should have the raw unlike myself, so you could easily use White-balance to make it so.

02

Firstly take your photo and add a levels adjustment layer, bump the levels inwards (move black arrow to the right and white arrow to the left) to heavily increase the contrast.

levels-01

Now go to your “channels” panel and ALT+Click on the RGB thumbnail to make a selection of the highlights. The reason we have used a levels adjustment layer before is to help the selection here as it makes a greater difference between the highlights and shadows.

After the selection you may have to hold SHIFT+ALT and left click the thumbnail again to expand the selection (up to you what looks right etc).

Now go ahead and go back to your layers tab and make a new layer. Fill this layer with white, (you can use edit>fill or if you have white as the default colour already. You can simply press ALT+Backspace to fill the layer with the current colour).

It should now look like this:
channel-selection

We need to control where it goes right? So go ahead and do two things. Delete the levels adjustment layer we made earlier. Then add a layer mask to the new layer we filled with white (the symbol at the bottom of the layers panel with a rectangle and circle in it).

Now simply paint black over where you want the snow to disappear and white where you want it to remain.

snow-01Now let’s match up the BG more.

Create two more adjustment layers, one Hue/Saturation and one Curves. Set the curves layer mode to “colour” instead of “normal” which it will be on by default. You can change this in the layers panel at the top.

Drop the saturation and remove red / green a little from the curves channel. You may also have to push the blue upwards to make the colours match your foreground.

finalLike before use a layer mask to “choose” where you want the effect to apply. I roughly painted it over the Background so the layer mask looked white on the BG and black on the foreground.

Now if you want to get really fancy you can pop over to RAW.exchange and pick up some snow packs for that extra punch!

final-02There you have it!

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Lightroom & Photoshop quick tip: how to pick a color from anywhere on your computer Default ThumbnailSnow Globe L.A. Is A Shaped Bokeh Time Lapse In A Snow Globe Turn Any Portrait Into A Snowy-Wintery Photo Using These Free Snowflake Pre-Keyed Images How to create winter portraits in the studio with Photoshop using real snow

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: Adobe Photoshop, christmas, snow, tip, tutorial

Joseph Parry: from diyphotography.net

About Joseph Parry

Joseph Parry is a Commercial and Editorial photographer based in the UK that provides cinematic photography and ounces of humour. Follow him on Instagram for stories and kick ass imagery.

« Why you should not delete images on your memory card using your camera
Affinity Photo 1.5 is out now for Windows and brings big new features to Mac users »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Learn photography

Recent Posts

  • Nanlite announces powerful AC-powered FC500B and FC300B LED lights
  • The Laowa Aurogon is a full-frame 10-50x super micro APO lens kit
  • Watch: Amateur astronomer captures a rare giant fireball on Jupiter
  • AI-generated deepfake nude images of school girls shake Spanish town
  • The Nikkor S Plena is a 135mm f/1.8 Z mount portrait lens

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy