From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

799 Adding cold and brittle snowflakes

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

799 Adding cold and brittle snowflakes

- [Instructor] All right. Now as recently as Deke's Technique 764, which was just a few months ago, I showed you how to create high-resolution snowflakes, but those were big, juicy, fluffy snowflakes. The White Walkers don't like those snowflakes at all. They like cold, brittle snowflakes like these right here. And so let me show you how to create them. I'll go ahead and switch over to our document so far, and I'll scroll up to the top of the Layers panel right here and I'll go ahead and click on the Eyes group, so that I'm creating my snowflakes in front of everything else. And now I'll create a new layer by pressing control + shift + n, or command + shift + n on the Mac, and I'll go ahead and call this guy Snow, and I'll press the enter key, or the return key on the Mac, that's going to be option + delete on the Mac. Now we want these to be high-resolution snowflakes. So we need to start with a small layer are achieved using the Mezzotint filter. And to get to that, go to the Filter menu, choose Pixelate, and choose this guy right here, Mezzotint, and then you want to work with ones of these dots right here. Now if you choose fine dots, you're going to have way too many flakes. If you choose something like coarse dots, then you're going to end up with big, juicy, fluffy snowflakes, which is not what we want. So I'm going to go with medium dots instead, which is going to keep things cold and brittle. All right, now I'll click OK in order to apply that effect. Now we want to magnify those little flakes. And so I'll press control + 0, or command + 0 on the Mac, to zoom back out. Then I'll return to the Edit menu and choose Free Transform once again, or again, you have that keyboard shortcut of control + t or command + t on the Mac. Make sure the Link icon is turned on. Then select either the width or height value and change it to 500%, which is going to look terrible at first. Now by the way, you can experiment with the interpolation method if you'd like. My favorite for this kind of thing is Bicubic, but if you want sharper flakes, you can experiment with Bicubic Sharper. But I'm going to stick with Bicubic, and then I'll press the enter key or return key on the Mac in order to accept that change. All right, now obviously, if I zoom back in on this guy, you can see that these flakes look terrible. They don't look like snowflakes at all. Now I don't expect every one of them to be a perfect little six-pointed snowflake, but they should look better than this. And so what we're going to do is apply some editable smart filters to this layer, which means we first need to convert it to a smart object. You can see that my lasso tool is still selected from the previous movie; that's just fine. I'll go ahead and right-click inside the image window and choose Convert to Smart Object. and choose Convert to Smart Object. And then I'll go up to the Filter menu, choose Noise, And then I'll go up to the Filter menu, choose Noise, and choose this command that gets rid of noise, and choose this command that gets rid of noise, which is Median. which is Median. What Median is going to do is average those pixels. What Median is going to do is average those pixels. And it's just like Dust & Scratches from a week ago, And it's just like Dust & Scratches from a week ago, except that it doesn't have a tolerance value. except that it doesn't have a tolerance value. Anyway, as you can see here, Anyway, as you can see here, I've taken this thing up to seven pixels, I've taken this thing up to seven pixels, but you can experiment with this value as you'd like. but you can experiment with this value as you'd like. As you can see, if I take the value down, As you can see, if I take the value down, I get more snowflakes, but they're also rougher, I get more snowflakes, but they're also rougher, whereas as I take the value up, whereas as I take the value up, I end up making them smoother, I end up making them smoother, but I also end up with fewer snowflakes. but I also end up with fewer snowflakes. Anyway, it's seven pixels, I like what I see, Anyway, it's seven pixels, I like what I see, so I'll go ahead and click OK. so I'll go ahead and click OK. And if you want to see what these snowflakes look like And if you want to see what these snowflakes look like against their background, against their background, then go ahead and drop out the blacks then go ahead and drop out the blacks by changing the blend mode from Normal to Screen, by changing the blend mode from Normal to Screen, and you're going to get this effect right here. and you're going to get this effect right here. Now, once again, I don't need this filter mask, Now, once again, I don't need this filter mask, so I'm going to right-click on it and choose Delete Filter Mask so I'm going to right-click on it and choose Delete Filter Mask to get rid of it. to get rid of it. Now we want a little bit of motion Now we want a little bit of motion associated with these snowflakes, associated with these snowflakes, and to make that happen, return to the Filter menu, choose Blur, and then choose Motion Blur. And I don't want nearly this high of a distance value, so I'll change it to 10 pixels instead, but that's going to make the snowflakes appear to move horizontally. It's not quite that windy, so I'm going to go ahead and reduce this value to negative 60 degrees. Looks pretty great. But you can experiment with different values as well. Something like 45 degrees might look better to you, but again, I'm going to go with negative 60, and then I'll click OK to accept that change. All right, now as you can see, my Layers panel is getting very, very full. To tidy things up, just go ahead and press the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, and click one of these up-pointing arrows, like the one to the right of the Gloom layer, and notice that'll go ahead and collapse all of your smart objects and layer effects. All right, now I'll press shift + f in order to switch to the full-screen mode, and I'll go ahead and zoom on in as well. And I want you to see that if I compare this image to my original, that a lot is different. So this is my original image. Notice the background and the snow and the shading and all that jazz. Because the shading is hand work, Because the shading is hand work, it of course is going to appear different. it of course is going to appear different. But notice that the background, But notice that the background, which relies on the Clouds filter, which relies on the Clouds filter, as well as the snow, which relies on the Mezzotint filter, as well as the snow, which relies on the Mezzotint filter, are both random. are both random. So every time you try this stuff, So every time you try this stuff, you're going to get a different result. you're going to get a different result. And that is how you create the cold and brittle snow And that is how you create the cold and brittle snow that you would see north of the wall here inside Photoshop. that you would see north of the wall here inside Photoshop.

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