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Posted on 16/01/13 1:57:54 PM |
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james
Surreal Spoofer Posts: 1194 Reply  |
Animated snow
Hello people, Yours truly has a desire to add animated snow to a project. Such as was depicted in the excellent Christmas banner, indeed it is for a banner. I have perused several of the many tutorials available on the Web, all of which appear to be of American origin, and to me, completely unintelligible. Perhaps my hearing is at fault. Should anyone like to assist, enlightenment would be welcome. |
Posted on 17/01/13 07:54:44 AM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 6997 Reply  |
Re: Animated snow
James, There are probably several ways of doing this - as there usually are in Photoshop. Here's the method I used for the Christmas banner: 1. Make a noise This is just a plain grey-filled layer, to which I've added 20% Gaussian Noise, set to Monochrome: 
2. Add a blur The more blur you add, the larger the clumps of snow will come out. This can be useful to know if you want two layers of snow, one large and one small, to give the impression of more depth. Here's the result of adding a 2-pixel Gaussian Blur: 
3. Tweak those levels This is the bit that makes all the difference. Open the Levels dialog, and you'll see that all the tones are bunched together in the histogram. Drag the left and right sliders together so they're very nearly touching, towards the right end of the spike in the histogram: 
This is the result that produces: 
4. Change the layer mode When you now change the layer mode from Normal to Screen, you can see through the black to the layer beneath: 
5. Make it move If you start the process off with a document that's, say, three times the height of the one you want to end up with, then you can make the snow scroll from top to bottom by positioning it twice in two separate frames, then using Tweening to generate the intermediate frames: 
Does this all make sense? |
Posted on 19/01/13 1:55:37 PM |
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james
Surreal Spoofer Posts: 1194 Reply |
Re: Animated snow
Thank you Steve, been away for a couple of days. This worked for you, which doesn't necessarily mean it will work for me. Will try. Thanks again. |
Posted on 21/01/13 07:37:23 AM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 6997 Reply |
Re: Animated snow
It's fairly straightforward, James - I'm sure you'll get it to work! |