How to process snow photos with PS?

The romantic snow scene in winter is always accompanied by cloudy days, which makes shooting very helpless. The gray sky is connected with a large area of snow, which reduces the saturation of the picture and loses the sense of hierarchy. Generally, HDR will be used to add color later. This time, we use two methods to create two kinds of snow scenes with different effects but rare artistic conception on the basis of maintaining low saturation.

The first scheme: add cyan tone to bring peace.

Scope of application: it is suitable for snowy scenes shot on cloudy days or films with large snowy scenes and empty composition; It can also be used in the later stage of rime works.

Due to the large area of snow and dense fog, light scattering is serious and it is easy to overexpose. When shooting, the manual gear is selected, which reduces1.7ev. Because there is no key shooting, the picture is not easy to lose details, which is also a conservative shooting method. The large aperture of F2.8 makes the background behind the subject as blurred as possible. But I found that the color of the picture is single, cloudy days and fog connect the sky with a large area of snow, forming a rime around it. Horses are also white, light in color, slightly magenta, with low overall saturation and no color. The reason for this situation is the limitation of environment. Therefore, this kind of film lacking color components obviously cannot be processed by other methods to enhance color, such as HDR. My approach is to add cyan to create a cold feeling while maintaining a low saturation environment. Shoot in RAW format, put the source file directly into Photoshop, and post-process it with Camera Raw plug-in, which is easier to adjust and has less loss of image quality.

The sky is connected with snow, and there is no hierarchy.

The background clutter needs cleaning up.

The sky is pale and slightly over-exploded.

Production steps

Face the original film directly and adjust the color of the fuselage with the camera Raw Jane.

1. Treat the overexposed area to make the light more uniform.

After entering Camera Raw, exposure, contrast and saturation are generally adjusted in the basic options. If the color temperature is reduced from 5450 to 5 150, the picture will be purer, magenta will disappear and even turn blue slightly. The exposure is increased by 0.7EV, full of strong light, and the photo image is covered with a layer of white yarn; Then increase the contrast and natural saturation to restore the original color as much as possible, but not too much. In this way, not only the picture is bright, but also the exposure of highlights becomes balanced, the overexposure of the sky disappears, the colors are not exaggerated, and the whole photo looks softer.

2. Creating a blue gradient sets the tone for the picture.

Because the gray sky is connected with snow, the whole picture looks lack of hierarchy and monotonous. I need to make a blue gradient to lower the sky, which is also a control step in the whole later period. Click the gradient filter button in the upper left corner, pull out the area to be adjusted, adjust the "color" option on the right, and select the best color while adjusting; After that, fine-tune the other options above to make the sky as blue as possible. The blue tone sets off the whiteness of snow and rime, which is also the key to realize empty inspiration.

3. Fine-tune the saturation to improve the overall texture

If the whole photo is blue, especially if the sky is dark, it will definitely look depressing. Adding yellow to the cool tone will enhance the atmosphere of the picture without destroying the overall sense of emptiness, so the horse's body will have some texture. Enter the "HSL/ Grayscale" option, select the saturation, and turn the yellow up a little. In addition to strengthening yellow according to the principle of three primary colors, I also increased the saturation of red and orange, and the picture has a positive charm.

4. Make detailed revisions to make the work more perfect.

At this point, the overall adjustment of the picture has been completed, and the details have been improved after the RAW is converted into JPGE format. I found that several horses in the distance in the photo were redundant, especially the one directly below the horse's mouth. Select the repair brush tool and remove all three horses, so that the picture is cleaner and the theme expression is more direct. Camera Raw is suitable for the adjustment of overall color, which is more direct than Photoshop, and Photoshop is used for the adjustment of details.

Magical "automatic coloring"

There is another way to deal with the snow scene in a cloudy world, which can be done quickly in just one step; It is not difficult to see that the original film was shot in foggy days, and the vegetation on the mountain was rich but dry, showing a monochrome texture against the snow background; There are still some red fruits hanging on the tree in front, which can hardly be seen in the original film. My method is to directly click "Auto Tone" under the image adjustment, and the red color of fruit is automatically corrected, so that the black of dead trees and the white of snow are more distinct, and no other adjustment is needed, which is very suitable for dealing with dark films on cloudy days.

The second scheme: watercolor painting with gradient.

Scope of application: suitable for films with rich colors but darkened by weather; The dead branches in this photo have a strong sense of form and are more suitable for the effect of ink painting.

Although the shooting of snow scenes is generally chosen on sunny days, as long as the theme is well grasped, good films can still be taken on cloudy days. Under normal circumstances, films taken on cloudy days lack a sense of hierarchy, so I deliberately choose pictures with strong contrast between foreground and background in composition to increase the depth of space; The branches in the foreground are darker in color, and there are some red leaves for ornament, but these are covered by the weather, and these colors will be restored later. In order to highlight this color contrast effect, I adopted the idea of enhancing the foreground and diluting the background, which was covered with a layer of white. When we deal with dark films on cloudy days, we might as well turn them into an elegant watercolor painting by creating a hazy feeling while maintaining low saturation.

Production steps

Making hazy watercolor painting with gradation and gradient

For this film with low saturation, watercolor painting effect is a good rescue measure; To successfully turn a photo into a watercolor painting, creating a hazy feeling is the key. In the later processing, we split the picture to be more targeted.

1. gradual change method to reduce lake noise

In order to achieve the ideal effect, we need to adjust the sky and the lake separately; First, reduce the lake noise, click the ""button at the bottom of the layer toolbar to open the "gradient fill" command menu, edit the gradient fill color, and edit the "color code" to set it to white, then adjust the "opacity color code" according to the preview effect to reduce the sky part and increase the opacity of the lake part; Change the layer blending mode to "soft light" to make the picture more natural.

2. Use gradient to darken the sky brightness.

The treatment method of sky darkening is similar to that of lakes, but it needs to be done twice, using different mixing modes; First create a gradient from dark yellow to transparent from top to bottom, and the blending mode is "lightness" (as shown in figure1); Create a gradient from black to transparent in the same way, and the blending mode is "overlay" (as shown in Figure 2); Only after two treatments can the sky darken naturally, and both are indispensable.

3. Brush to remove foreground noise

The trees in the distance are green and the house is very light yellow. These influences need to be eliminated. Create a new layer first, and change the layer property to "Color". Then click the "Brush" tool on the left, choose pure black as the color, and draw a sketch in the middle of the picture that needs to be decolored. At this time, you can see that the decolored position becomes black and white.

4. Brighten the picture and blur it

After removing the color, double-click the color layer to get the layer style tab, click the gradient overlay on the left to change the blending mode to linear gradient (add), reduce the opacity, and reverse the angle to -90 degrees. The brightness of the decolored part of the picture has been obviously improved, and the hazy feeling is vividly portrayed, and other parts are not affected.

5. Details of the prospect.

After the background is hazy, we need to highlight the foreground and restore its original color. This piece of processing mainly uses brush tools to adjust snow, branches and red leaves respectively. Because the snow on the branches is a little dark, in order to improve its brightness, a new layer is built and the mixed mode of "linear thinning (adding)" is selected. Choose the brush tool, set the foreground color to light gray, and sketch carefully in the snow, and you will find that it is much brighter. The treatment of red leaves is similar, except that the brush color is changed to red and the branches are changed to dark brown. It should be noted that when using the brush tool, it is recommended to properly select the size and hardness of the brush and flexibly adjust the opacity and flow rate.

See:/design/201312/67581.html for a detailed tutorial.