How To Create Faux Snow With Photoshop Actions

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With winter coming up in the Northern Hemisphere, we thought we’d share a “winter” like edit for today’s before and after Blueprint. Add a wintery feel and faux snow with Photoshop Actions.

This example below was edited with:

 –> MCP Four Seasons Photoshop Actions <–

For the purposes of this photo edit, I grabbed an older image of my daughter Jenna playing in the snow.  As part of “Flashback Friday” on our Facebook Page, I have been digging through older images. I would classify this image as a “snapshot” versus “portrait.”  And while I love it and have it in a photo album, it’s not the kind I would print big on a wall.  Still, it was fun to re-edit so many years later.

The white snow was nearly blown out, yet my daughter was underexposed.  There were no snowflakes falling from the sky.  But I changed all that.

*** Disclaimer: We know that some of you reading will LOVE the novelty of adding snow to an image.  It’s fun!  We also know some professional photographers might cringe. That’s ok too.  Everyone is allowed to have their opinions as long as they are nice about it. At MCP Actions, we give you the tools to help you edit. From there you can use your imagination and creativity to create the style and look you want.

 

Here is the original photo.

snow-day-jenna-Winter-before-600x620 How To Create Faux Snow With Photoshop Actions Blueprints Photoshop Actions Photoshop Tips

Now for a step-by-step tutorial….  Here’s what we did to brighten her, add some contrast and make a winter wonderland with snowflakes and a blustery feel, with a few clicks in Photoshop.

  1. Ran the Winter Whirlwind Base Photoshop action from Four Seasons. This is a black and white action by default, but there is a one-click option to convert to color. We did just that. This action helped the colors, contrast and brightness of the photo.
  2. Next, we wanted to add some faux snow. The Lake Effect Snow action adds faux snow in Photoshop.  You can change the direction, size of the flakes, or the intensity too.We chose the medium and small flakes.
  3. Her face looked a bit dark, so we ran Illuminate and painted it on her face with a low-opacity brush.
  4. After adding the snow, the photo lost contrast.  This happens with real snow coming down too.  But unlike real-life, we could just add some back.  To do this we used Hemispheres and lowered to 33% opacity.
  5. We also wanted her eyelashes to pop, so we used Clarif-Eye on her eyes.
  6. Lastly the snowman… We wanted to have that red scarf, orange nose and Jenna’s coat to pop a bit.  So we used Color Carnival from the Summer Solstice section of Four Seasons and painted it on with a low-opacity brush just in those spots where we wanted a bit more vibrant colors.
That’s all – super easy and it took about two minutes from beginning to end.  Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Here is the after photo:

snow-day-jenna-WInter-Color How To Create Faux Snow With Photoshop Actions Blueprints Photoshop Actions Photoshop Tips

 

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