Tecnics

In a few days is Christmas and also on our mail often arrives many Christmas-themed e-mails … but as you can quickly create an animated gif with effect snow? No problem … With Photoshop and immediately see how to create a beautiful snow digital 🙂

Step 1: create flakes

We choose a photo maybe a landscape of mountains covered with snow or a fir tree if we are to remain in Christmas theme. For this article I have chosen the design of an angel on a blue background that I own, you customize your image as you like

Above my level image I create a new layer that will call “snow” and then choose a brush suitable to simulate the flakes.

Before you start drawing you need to set the brush to get the right dispersion and the variation in size of the flakes using the properties of the default brushes. To do this I set the Brush Tip Shape by visiting:

Window> Brushes

This window can change size, angle, roundness, and spacing. The higher the value of the spacing, the flakes will be more far apart, so I can accordingly adjust the intensity of the snowfall.
The best thing in these cases is going to change all values to see what it is, then change the size, roundness and finally increase the value of dispersion for the flakes to a disorderly and random distance between them.

Now we can draw the flakes with the brush set for our needs.
Holding down the left mouse button and let’s move on the snow level as if we were painting. If an area is too low in flakes,’s add a little ‘maybe slightly changing the brush size (to create a sort of effect distance).

Step 2: animate flakes

If you use Photoshop 7 to make the animated flakes we switch to the program ImageReady (included). If you’re using Photoshop CS3, you can directly use this dialog box by clicking on menu

Window>  Animation

Now we create new frames by pressing the button Duplicate current frame (see figure) and for the respective frames reveal a single layer.

The rate of reproduction that advice is at 0.2 frames per second.
Multiple instances of animation will do, the better the result. From time to time by clicking the “play” I can see the results of operations.
Time to save our soul chooses:

File>  Save Optimized As

Optimize palette, choose GIF from the menu of the file format (GIF image allows me to see the animation)

Now we just have to send our picture by email … and you’re a nice greeting card 🙂 Merry Christmas!