How to Create a Magical Christmas Snow Globe in Photoshop

Step 15

Create a Curves Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves) with the settings indicated below. Alt-click between the curves and the hand layer in order to limit the curves effect only to the hand. This process is called clipping a layer to another. If we were to create another adjustment layer and also press Alt-click between the newly created adjustment layer and the curves layer we would also limit the effect of the newly created layer to the hand only. This is what we will do in the following steps.

Step 16

Create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation) and use the settings shown below. Clip the Hue/Saturation layer to the hand layer.

Step 17

Make a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N) and clip it to the hand layer. Change the blending mode to Overlay. Choose the standard Photoshop round soft brush and lower the Opacity to 10%. Paint with black on the bottom of the hand.

Step 18

Make another new layer and also clip it to the hand layer. After you change the blending mode to Overlay use the same round soft brush to paint with white on the top of the hand.

Step 20

Create a Curves Adjustment Layer and clip it to the hand layer. Use the settings shown below in order to create a lighten effect. Fill the layer mask with black and paint with white over the top of hand in the layer mask in order to reveal the effect there.

Step 21

The color of the hand it’s quite cold so we should warm it up a little. Make a new layer and change the blending mode to Hard Light and lower the Opacity to 44%. Paint with a warm orange color (#ce8b47) over the hand with a low opacity soft brush. Clip this layer to the hand layer. Here’s how your hand related layers should look like if you followed every step of the tutorial.

Step 22

Open the file “Bubble”. Use the Pen Tool or the Elliptical Marquee Tool to make a selection of the bubble. Copy and paste the bubble into our scene. Place the bubble over the hand as shown below (and don’t forget to convert the bubble layer to a smart object).

Step 23

Add a layer mask to the bubble layer and use a black brush at 100% opacity to hide the bottom part of the bubble. Lower the opacity of the brush to 50% and paint with black over the rest of the bubble.

Step 24

Create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and clip it to the bubble layer. Lower the saturation to -95.

Step 25

Import “Snow Patch” brush. Create a new layer and paint with white some snow at the bottom of the ball. You can use a layer mask to lower the opacity of the snow or you can lower the opacity of the layer itself. Add a couple more snow layers to cover the whole bottom of the bubble.

Step 26

Open the file “Tree1”. Select everything (Ctrl + A) and copy. Paste the tree in our scene and position it inside of the ball. Lower the opacity to 69%.

Step 27

Create a Curves Adjustment Layer and use the settings shown below. Clip this layer to the tree layer in order to lighten it a little.

Step 28

Open the file “Ornament”. Choose an ornament and do copy/paste into our scene. Place the ornament on the tree.