Probably, everyone who begins to master Photoshop has a thirst for creativity, and it becomes crowded with incredibly artistic ideas in his head. Therefore, it is possible that, having heard, for example, the words of the song "... the snow is spinning over the tent ...", the novice "photoshopper" will immediately think: "Interesting, but how to make snow in Photoshop?" If quickly, but not very realistic, then this is done so.
Create white snow with "black ink"
To begin with, we find a winter composition (do not pour it in the desert) and load it into the editor. Create a new layer above the background, fill it with black, changing the blend mode of this layer to “Screen”. Outwardly, nothing has changed.
We set white as the main color. Open the "Filter Gallery" in the "Filter" menu and, selecting the "Mascara" filter in the "Sketch" folder, select the optimal settings for the selected background (stroke length, direction and tone balance).
You can use the Dry Brush effect from the Imitation filter folder, where in this case you only need to adjust the brush size, setting the value to no more than 3 so that the snowfall is not unnaturally heavy.
Now mash the “snow layer” with the “Gaussian Blur” filter so that the “grains” of snow become flakes and reduce the opacity to your taste.
The first time, most likely, it will not work, but if you experiment with the settings, you can achieve a decent result.
The next simple way to make falling snow in Photoshop is essentially the same as the first, but somewhat advanced compared to it.
Snow from the "noise"
The initial conditions remain the same, that is, the background is a winter landscape. A new layer is created above it and filled with black, but the blending mode does not change.
Open the “Filter”, go to “Noise”, select the “Add Noise” command and set the effect to about 150-160% (Gaussian distribution, monochrome).
Go to the Blur filter and blur the future snow with the Blur + command. This, of course, is not the most effective scourer, but in this case, what you need.
The noise picture now resembles little snow (to put it mildly), so go to "Image> Correction> Levels" and set the white (right) slider somewhere at 200-208 and the right (black) at 160-165 on the output values ​​chart. We don’t touch the rest.
Now the picture resembles either the Milky Way, or the snow in bright moonlight, but not the noise anymore, but if we change the blending mode to “Screen”, everything will fall into place. The black color will disappear, but the “snowflakes” will seem to you rather stuck to the image than falling from the sky.
In order to turn the white “garbage” into falling snow, in Photoshop there is a special filter “Blur in motion”, which we get into by going to “Filter> Blur” and there we set the angle (-60) - (70) degrees, and the offset is 8-10 pixels.
Now it has become more realistic, but it still looks somewhat flat. To create a feeling of the depth of falling snow, you need to add a new layer with larger snowflakes.
Duplicate the snow layer (Ctrl + J), rotate the copy 180 degrees ("Edit> Transform> Rotate 180"), then go to "Filter> Appearance> Crystallization". We leave the default cell size (10), since for our case it is just right, but the large snowflakes turned out to be a little angular, so again go to "Filter> Blur" and select "Blur in motion" with an angle there (-60) - (70) degrees and an offset of 15-18 pixels.
If it seems to you that the snow is pale, you can combine both snow layers and then create a copy of this “tandem”, after which the brightness will increase, because both layers were in the blend mode “Screen”.
Add realistic snow to Photoshop, controlling only the blending options
This express method will not snow the spring, summer or autumn landscape, but the effect of its application can evoke verses with the words “winter has come” or paintings with the same name.
Choose a landscape whose composition will not be very affected (or maybe won) if you powder it with snow, and upload it to Photoshop.
Create a new layer and fill it with white. Then double-click on the layer to open the “Blending Option” dialog box and in the “Overlay if” section at the bottom, divide the black slider of the lower scale (“Underlay”) on the left into two parts (with the Alt key) and move them while looking at your picture, which you are transforming, “adding” snow, hoarfrost, hoar frost, and maybe ice to the landscape.
These manipulations will replace the dark pixels of the bottom layer with white, and the lighter pixels will become pure white.
If there is too much white, you can add a mask to this layer and correct it with a soft black brush, choosing the appropriate opacity.
And now, to enhance the realism of the inexorable approaching winter, you can add falling snow, using the already familiar effects described above.
Falling snow animation
Surely, many users are thinking, creating the snow effect in Photoshop, how to make snowflakes come to life and fall for real? And so, for example.
Choose a winter landscape, against which snow will fall, open the picture in Photoshop, create a new layer and fill it with white.
Take the "Brush" and, pressing F5, open the panel of its settings. On the tab "Brush print shape" we select the shape (round for snow, but you can also download snowflake brushes), the size and stiffness of the stroke, but the main thing is to set the intervals (for falling snow this will be at least 180-200%).
On the tab "Shape Dynamics" we adjust the size fluctuations, the minimum diameter and shape fluctuations (the snow is heterogeneous).
The "scattering" should be at least 700% and probably better on both axes.
Now a few sweeping brush strokes on the canvas will make you “snowfall” suitable for a particular landscape, having solved the first problem (how to make snow in “Photoshop”), and now you need to make it “tumble down from the sky”.
Before proceeding to the creation of the animation, make a copy of the snow layer, go to full-screen mode (F) and, after calling the transformation (Ctrl + T), drag the duplicate up with the mouse, outside the canvas, placing it directly above the image. Then, exiting full-screen mode, you need to combine both snow layers.
Now we will make a "movie". Open the timeline by ticking it in the Window menu.
Expand the list in the center with a triangle to the right and, choosing "Create frame animation", click on the line, thus loading the first frame of the animation onto the timeline.
Duplicate the frame by throwing it on the button to the left of the basket and pressing Shift, use the down arrow on the keyboard to move the snow layer on the second frame, aligning its upper edge with the upper edge of the background image.
Now, pressing Ctrl, select both frames, click the "Create intermediate frames" button and add 10-15 frames (for snow just right).
We play the animation to make sure that it works, then select all the frames by selecting the first and the last with the Shift key. By right-clicking at the bottom of any frame, we set the delay to 0.1–0.2 seconds and in the line with the prompt “Select cycle parameters” indicate “Constantly”.
Snow brushes
At the beginning of the description of the previous method, understanding how to make snow in Photoshop, we had to work on creating our own snow brush from scratch, but there’s nothing wrong with downloading ready-made snowflakes, snowflakes, flakes in all respects, "cereals" and even whole snow charges, which are numerous on the Web.
In this case, a chic and rather believable snowfall can be made with one brush stroke, choosing the appropriate size and pattern.
The simplicity of this method allows you to add a new expression to the piggy bank of the most popular "popular" comparisons: "It's simple how to make snow in Photoshop".
"Overlaid" snow
This method of "complexity" is not far from the previous one. We are talking about the texture of falling snow in PNG or JPEG formats, which are also full in the public domain.
With transparent pictures, everything is simple, and textures in JPEG format are inserted above the background image onto a new layer, for which you just need to change the blending mode to “Screen” or “Soft Light”, and then reduce the opacity if necessary.