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Realistic Ice Effect
Level: Experienced Software:
Photoshop
Scouting the internet's different photoshop tutorials and reading people's posts in different forums I found that there are very few tutorials showing you how to make realistic ice in photoshop and that many people find it very hard to do. I took this as a challenge and because I never had to make ice before and I thought I might give it a try just to see what I can come up with. After 2 hours of hard work, something showed up and I was satisfied with it, I liked the crystal sharp look of the ice I made in photoshop.
Then I thought I could make a photoshop tutorial on how to make realistic ice in photoshop. Open a new document, mine is 640x480 pixels.
Make your background blue, I chose #2e517d for mine. Using the Custom Shape Tool, choose the shape named Fern, you can find it under the Nature shapes in the Custom Shape picker.
Create a fern shape layer. All you have to do now is to double click the shape layer you just created in order to see the Layer Styles and to apply some styles to it.
Start with a Gradient Overlay at an angle of 111 degrees, with the scale set to 70% and opacity to 100%. The gradient must have the following colors: #c8dbea at 10%, #ffffff at 50% and #c8dbea at 90%.
The effect should look similar to this:
Apply a Stroke effect with the size of 1 px, Position set to Inside and Color set to #28a6ff.
Apply Color Overlay style, with the Opacity set to 75% and color set to #abc2e4.
Apply a Bevel and Emboss style, leave all the settings default except your Gloss Contour which should change to Ring and your Shadow mode color which should be set to #3d5286.
Add a Contour style and set your range to 100%, Contour to Cone and check Anti-aliased.
Add Texture, with the Pattern set to Wood and Scale set to 63%.
Apply a Satin style, but change your Blend Mode to Normal, Opacity to 100% and color to #a6d5f5.
Add a Inner Glow, with the color changed to #2b81d9.
Add a Outer Glow, with the color changed to #7dd9ff and the Opacity set to 15%.
Add a Inner Shadow effect, with the color changed to #484a70.
Add a Drop Shadow style, with the color set to #1b2a6a, Opacity to 40%. Uncheck Use Global Light and set your Angle to -45 degrees, Distance to 65 px, Spread 5% and Size 100 px.
Now you have an ice effect that can be easily modified and applied to any other object you want.
I always try to take my photoshop tutorials a little further and see what else can I come up with if I am continuously improving an image. Here is what I come up with for this tutorial after adding a few other effects:
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