If you love pictures of icy winter landscapes, but really can't stand sitting out in the cold for hours on end watching your hand freeze to your camera, you might want to learn these little-known techniques for plunging any summer scene into deep winter.  All you need are a high-resolution photograph, Photoshop, and nice warm fingers...
 

Step 1: Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size and/or format. The best results for this tutorial usually involve large images based in the countryside with generally high brightness. Artificial concentrated patches of deep blue (i.e. from car paint, etc) can make color balance much harder to process, but this can be overcome if you have the patience needed to play around with your settings.

Step 2: Ensure your background layer is selected in the layers palette, and create a new adjustment layer from the main menu by selecting Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Mixer. Enter in the settings on the right and press OK.  Change the layer blending mode to Lighten, and then take a look at your image. My settings may not work ideally for you, so double-click on the adjustment layer in the layers palette if needed to alter the settings further.  The best results come from moving the Blue and Constant sliders around until you have the ideal trade-off between color loss and the artificial frost effect.

Step 3:  Press OK and take a look at your frosty image.  If you have washed out colors, just go back to the adjustment layer and adjust it accordingly.   Of course, no winter scene is complete without copious amounts of snow... and that is what we are going to create next...

Step 4: Create a new layer set on top of all the other layers in the layer palette add a new blank transparent layer into this layer set.  Select this new layer and Edit > Fill it with 50% grey.  Then run Filter > Noise > Add Noise enter in the following settings: Amount: 50% Distribution: Gaussian Monochromatic: Checked Getting there!   Add a blur via Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with a 5px radius to give your particles a nice fuzzy edge.

Step 5: Doesn't look much like snow at the moment, does it?  Well, we can change that!  Ensure your fuzzy grey layer is still selected and create a new adjustment layer from the main menu via Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Click on the curves box that pops up and duplicate my curve on the near left.  Press OK.   You should now have a layer palette that resembles my own - also as illustrated on the far left.  Oh, and you should also be left with some nice large flakes of snow on a black background!  ;)

Step 6: Repeat step 5 with a whole new layer set, but instead of using a 5px radius for the gaussian blur, use a 3px radius instead, and enter the curve in the image to the left.  This will create a medium grade of snow.

Step 7: Nearly there!   Repeat step 5 again, but with a 1px radius gaussian blur and the nice little curve on the left.  This creates the finest grade of snow. Now that we have made three layers of snow, all we need to do is combine them together.  To do this, just change the layer blending mode of the three snow-filled layer sets (*NOT* the layers themselves) to Lighten, and lower the opacity to 90%.

Step 8: And here we have it - a nice English orchard in the middle of summer has been thrust headlong into the depths of winter.  The flakes of snow do not come out well in the small thumbnail to the left, but the differences between the full-scale before and after images are definitely noticeable (Beware: each image is 1mb in size). This should not, of course, be the end of your seasonal change.  You can add more layers of snow, blizzards, or even a cold-looking sky if needed... but I'll leave those additions up to you.   Have fun!

- Tutorial written by Man1c M0g

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