SemiPro Tutorials

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Faux Snow Font

I actually got inspiration from the Christmas background on Cloudica’s website doing the holidays, so I thought I’d try my hand at it, and see where I got. Well here it is! It’s gonna be more of a quick tutorial because I wanna get this out before Christmas is over. Remember, if you don’t get it right the first time (mostly using the pen tool), keep trying and tweaking. I had to, in order to get the results.

Step 1

Make a 400×500 document with a #1f2b2b-#3b585e radial gradient with the start point near the top.

Step 2

Now this is the harder part, getting a good tree shape with the pen tool. I had to do it quite a few times, so don’t worry if you don’t get it on the first try. Just get something you like, and that’s fine. Now, for the colors, when using the pen tool set the color to a custom gradient (settings below) of #a9cead-#54bb56-#1d4a1e.

As you can see, I also have a drop shadow. The following settings create a nice, simple, soft drop shadow.

Step 3

Let’s start by creating the snow (on a new layer). I’m gonna tell you how to do one, and you can do the rest by your self (to keep this nice and short). It’s fairly easy, but can take some time to get a good result. Using the pen tool on Freehand (mode) and a color of white, draw a snow shape and tweak it until it looks good. This is a cartoonish image, so it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should at least look normal.

When your done, select the surrounding area with the rectangle selection tool, and then click the selection. This will select the snow. Now press Ctrl+Shift+F and contract the selection by 3 pixels (Selections > Modify > Contract). Fill it with a light gray-white gradient. De-select.

Then do three more…

Ok that’s over! Take a breath, lotta work huh? Well it’s over, so you can rest easy. For now … *evil laugh* As you can see I added the drop shadow on each of those. IF you do them all on the same layer, do them all at once. If each is in a separate layer, wait to the end and apply it to snow layer #1, and then simply go to all the other snow layers and press CTRl+Y to repeat the drop shadow.

Step 4

What’s a tree without a trunk? A truckless tree of course, but we don’t want one of those, so let’s make one! Make a new layer and drag it under the green tree layer. Then fill it in with a custom brown gradient of #241e12-#58574d.

Then make a new layer and make a skinnier rectangle and fill it with white, set the layer blending mode to Overlay, and lower the opacity. If all that is confusing, take a look at this:

The drop shadow is optional, since the bottom portion won’t show, but the sides will.

Step 5

One more step for the tree and we are done with it. Make a new layer right above the green tree layer and use the freehand pen tool and make an white shape like below (lower the opacity to around 15, and set the layer’s blending mode to overlay!)

I hide most of the snow layers so you can see it. It looks better with the snow visible!

Step 6

Now let’s add some ground. Make a layer above the trunk (oh yeah, merge the trunk highlight layer with the trunk color layer so you have one layer) and make a ground shape like below. I used the dodge tool (right click!) to make it gray at the bottom.

Step 7

Now  make a layer under the snow layer (and under the trunk layer) and do another hill-shape with the pen tool, but make the color #39555b. Again, use the dodge tool (right click!) to make it dark on the bottom. I also lightened it up a tab on the top-left (left click!).

Step 8

Repeat step 7 but with #2e4a50 instead, which is a little darker.

Step 9

Now let’s make the background a little more interesting. Make a layer and move it just above the background layer. Using the pen tool, make a selection like in the following screenshot, and set the opacity to Overlay and Opacity to 8.

Step 10

Using the Faux snow font, and the letter “E”, add a snow flack and copy and paste it 3-4 times. Then copy it and resize it (Shift+S, turn off “All Layers”, size 80% x 80%), then resize it again and copy it a few more times. Be creative

Conclusion

Add some text and call it done! Now for the text, I added some and expanded the selection by 3 pixels and applied the drop shadow I did for everything else. One drop shadow to rule them all.

Download .pspimage file