Crystillic Ice

Step 1.

Create a new document of any size. I used 1000 x 1000 for this example, Press 'D' on your keyboard to reset your fore/background colors to white (foreground), and black (background).

Step 2.

Press and hold: Shift + Ctrl + Alt and press the 'N' key four times.

This will create 4 new layers, so you should have a total of 5 layers now.

Step 3.

Double click the background layer, and change it/rename it to 'layer 0'.

Step 4.

Go to Filter->Render->Clouds to create some clouds on this layer.

Step 5.

Now go to each of the other 4 layers, and do the same. Filter->Render->Clouds

There should be a different render of "clouds" on each layer. Your layer palette should look similar to this:

Step 6.

Select layer 4 (the topmost layer) and go to: Filter->Render->Difference clouds, and do the same on 'layer 2' (it should be the 3rd from the bottom). Here's how my layers pallet looks:

Step 7.

Okay next we're going to add the stained glass filter to each of our layers, with slight differences/variances in the effect.

Select layer 0 (the bottom most layer).

Go to: Filter->Texture->Stained glass

and apply these settings:

Set the Cell to 10, Border to 4 and Light to 3

Now on to layer 1:

Filter->Texture->Stained glass

Set the Cell to 15, Border to 8 and Light to 4

layer 2:

Filter->Texture->Stained glass

Set the Cell to 30, Border to 16 and Light to 10

layer 3:

Filter->Texture->Stained glass

Set the Cell to 5, Border to 2 and Light to 5

and finally layer 4:

Filter->Texture->Stained glass

Set the Cell to 10, Border to 5 and Light to 10

Your layer pallet should look similar to this when finished:

Step 8.

Now we'll adjust the blending options for each of the layers.

• change layer 4 to "multiply", and set the opacity to: 65 percent
• change layer 3 to "multiply", and set the opacity to: 86 percent
• change layer 2 to "multiply", and set the opacity to: 44 percent
• change layer 1 to "overlay".
• leave layer 0 as it is "normal".

Your image should look something like this now:

Step 9.

The only thing left to do is add color to your image.

Do this by going to each layer, and pressing Ctrl + U and adjusting the Hue, Saturation, Lightness settings to your liking.

Note: just make sure you check the colorize box each time.

Here's the image I came up with after playing with the color settings a little using various hues of aqua blue:

These are also great for sig/banner backgrounds too:

Enjoy and have fun!!