Snow Effect

Description: This tutorial teaches you how to create nice looking snow effect on your text, you can use the effect on christmas themed graphics.
To start this tutorial, create a new document and fill the background with a dark color, this is so we can see the snow better, we can change the background color at the end.
Then use your type tool to type in your text.

Select the lasso tool.
Then draw your selections on top of your one of your letter. This will be your snow, so make it look runny/dripping from the top down.

Now create the same type of selection for the rest of your text, but do this by "adding" to the selection. To add to selection, in the selections' menu bar, select the "Add to Selection" button.
This is the most time consuming part for this tutorial, take your time to create some nice dripping selections. If you accidentally make a bad selection, just press CTRL+Z to undo that step.
Switch to your Channels pallette (Windows-Channels) then create a new channel by clicking on the "new channel" icon at the bottom of the pallette.
Press "D" to reset your your colors. then select the Paint bucket tool, and fill in the selection with white.

Press CTRL+D to deselect your selection.
Then go to Filter->Blur->Guassian BlurRadius: 3px
Now go to Image->Adjustments->LevelsMove your levels sliders so the image is sharp and smooth.

Switch back to your layer's pallette, create a new layer.
Go to Select->Load Selection, in the load selection pannel, in the channel field, select Alpha 1.
Then fill in the selection (on the new layer) with white. Now you can press CTRL+D to deselect.
Add some shade to the snow, by adding a bevel emboss style to it.
So go ahead and add "Layer->Layer-Style->Bevel Emboss" to the snow layer.
Now, you can just use your own creativity to add layer styles/background color to your image, but if you want to create what i've done, apply the following layer styles to the original text layer.(note: You may need to adjust a few things with the settings because these settings have different effects depending on the size of the text)

Now create a new layer in between your text layer and snow layer.
Press D to set your foreground color white, then select your brush tool and set the brush size to about 27, and set it's hardness to about 70% (Set this in the "Brush" Pallette)

Water Marking Tutorial

To get started open an image that you want watermarked. I'll be using the image you see in figure 1.1.
figure 18.1I'll be using text for this technique, but take a quick look at this Paint Shop Pro version, where I used a company logo as the watermark. With your image opened in Photoshop, it's time to get started... Click on the "Default Foreground and Background colors" icon to set the default black foreground and white background colors. The icon is near the bottom of the Toolbar, just below the foreground and background color swatches (see figure 1.2).
TIP: You can use the keyboard shortcut to quickly set the default colors. To do so, simply hit the 'D' key.
figure 1.2Select the Horizontal Type tool and set the Font Family, the Font Style and the Font Size. I used Myriad set to Bold Italic 8 points for this example, but you can, and should play around to see what fits in best with the image(s) and the idea(s) that you're working on. Click anywhere inside your image and type in the text you want displayed as a watermark. I'll type in 'copyright © T. Michael Clark' for this image (see figure 1.3). Note that I got the copyright symbol by using ALT 0169 (that is, I held down the ALT key and typed 0169 on the number pad of my keyboard).
NOTE: If you start typing and find that the text is too big, or too small, you can select the text you've entered, using the Type tool and reset the Font Family, Style or Size.
figure 1.3Here comes the fun part... Choose Filter, Stylize, Emboss. You'll get a warning about the type layer needing to be "rasterized" before you can proceed. Rasterizing the type layer means that it can no longer be edited. No matter, if need be, you can simply re-create the type layer. Click "OK" to proceed. As you can see in figure 1.4, the Emboss effect leaves the text looking raised. It has also changed the type to a mid-gray color with light and darker edges giving the effect of embossing. The gray fill is especially important here because we'll choose a layer-blending mode that will make the new text visible but not as though we had simply typed on the image. Instead what will happen is that the gray will disappear letting the image show through, but the lighter and darker edges will remain leaving a visible watermark on the image. To see what I mean, change the layer-blending mode to 'Overlay'. You can change the layer-blending mode from within the Layer palette. The pulldown menu to do so is located in the upper left corner of the Layers palette.
figure 1.4Figure 1.5 shows my finished image. Notice that, though subtle, the watermark is visible and even readable.
figure 1.5

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