Looking for that perfect holiday photo? But all you’ve got is cold and rainy… or even worse bright and sunny? In this tutorial I’d like to get you in the holiday mood as we remake a photo for winter. By using Photoshop’s powerful Masking and Layer Blend modes we’re going to apply overlays to add snow to a photograph that was taken in sunny Florida.

The Technique in Action

http://youtu.be/qBLguTJ6Q38

Overview of Key Steps

Here’s what it takes to pull this off.

  1. Add two snow overlays to an image, resize to fit.
  2. Crop the image to remove hidden pixels.
  3. Change the layer blend modes of the snow overlay to screen.
  4. Create a layer mask on the first snow overlay and paint out the effect on the subject’s face.
  5. Duplicate the layer.
  6. Copy the layer mask to the top snow overlay.
  7. Add a Blue Photo Filter adjustment Layer and lower the density.
  8. Create a new layer with the flatten image, [PC] Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E, [MAC] Shift+Command+Options+E
  9. Create a Curves adjustment Layer, change the layer blend mode to Soft Light and lower the opacity.
  10. Flatten the image and save.

Extra Resources