Adding Winter with Photoshop

October 9, 2009 in Featured, Pro Apps, Tutorials by David John

There is no debating the power of Photoshop when it comes to photo manipulation and enhancement. Many alterations to photos can be time consuming complicated and delicate work yet adding realistic snow to a landscape photography is actually particularly easy.

This quick guide will take you through the steps of adding winter to any landscape photo, but please note the process works better on bright clear landscapes rather than darker low contrast photos so chose a good photo from your library.

before

1. Load the Photo into Photoshop

Not much to explain for this step.

2. Add a Channel Mixer

At the bottom of the layers control you will see a small circle that is half black half white (fourth icon across). Click this and add a new Channel Mixer Layer.

A new layer will be added to the top of the layers window.

Ensuring you have selected the Channel Mixer Layer set the layer to “lighten” at the top of the layers window.

Now we turn to actually start controlling the Channel Mix and adding a touch of frost and snow to our landscape photograph.

light

mix

3. Channel Mix

If the Channel Mix window isn’t currently on screen double click the Channel Mixer layer.

This is where the fun begins. First set the Mix to “Monochrome” by clicking the monochrome tick box. This will change the Mix Colour from Red to Grey.

a) Set both the Red and Green levels to Max(200%)

Your photograph should look very white and over exposed, if it looks very red or green you have forgotten to click the monochrome button. Now it is time to play with what I call the “Snow Controls”.
Reduce both the Blue and Contrast levels to achieve the level of winter you desire.

I find I am continually increasing and decreasing either the Blue or contrast to create the right balance.

I generally start with the blue at -100 and tweak either side and the higher the blue level the more colour you are going to have in the non frosted areas.
snow
It is amazing just how effective this technique is for adding a touch of winter to landscape photos, making it an ideal process for this year’s Christmas card.

I have uploaded a before and after shot of the technique in action to Flickr (Before and After are links).

4 Comments

October 9, 2009 at 6:32 pm | Andrew Olson

Not to sound like a douche, but that is one of the least impressive photoshop jobs I’ve seen. If you want to see the real power of photoshop, check out one of the projects I created last year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ao-designphoto/3116057350/in/set-72157607378586886/
October 9, 2009 at 6:49 pm | David John

Thanks Andrew. Did you see the before and after shots on Flickr ? http://www.flickr.com/photos/digmotv/ Sometimes people need to add snow / frost to a photo and I for one think the result is realistic. As a photoshop novice being able to recreate this look is challenge enough.
October 9, 2009 at 6:58 pm | Adam

Andrew, That’s one ugly edit Seriously, I ain’t joking. Thanks for writing this up David, I need to learn photoshop again and this could come in handy for some tweaking of images.
October 9, 2009 at 7:11 pm | Coleran

Andrew has a point here. It is an interesting processing technique but the colour is wrong anyway. The sepia effect warms it up, not cools it. It has been used as a blunt instrument and destroyed a good portion of the detail in your image.

The (perhaps) better technique would be to use selections based on the colour of the grass and path. With these selections, on new layers, add the snow. Snow is an addition to the environment, and not a color. Use median on the snow layers to soften them out a little and add a little blue/indigo. The Original image could then be desaturated a little and a touch of blue added to give it a much cooler feel.