How to Create a Snowflake Brush in Photoshop

What You’ll Be Creating

In this tutorial, we will create a snowflake Photoshop brush and make overlays for the image using a snow brush Photoshop preset.

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used in the production of this tutorial:

• Photo of Siberian Husky Dogs

1. How to Create a Snowflake Using Shape Layers

Step 1

Press Control-N to create a new document and use the following settings: 1000 x 1000 px; 300 dpi.

Step 2

Click U and select the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Create a shape with the following settings: Width: 30 px; Height: 720 px.

Step 3

After that, we need to create a duplicate of the shape using Right Click > Duplicate.

Step 4

Hit Control-T and change the Height to 20%.

Step 5

Rotate the shape by 45° while holding Shift.

Step 6

While holding Shift, move the layer 305 px up and 40 px to the right.

Step 7

Create a duplicate of the layer, and then go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.

Step 8

Move the duplicate of the shape 80 px to the left.

Step 9

Select the small shapes while holding Shift and then Right Click > Merge.

Step 10

Create two duplicates of this new layer, and move each new shape 70 px down.

Step 11

Merge all the shape layers and create a duplicate of your new layer. Then rotate it 180° while holding Shift.

Step 12

Merge the shapes again, and create two duplicates of the layer. Rotate these duplicates by 60° and -60°, and then merge these shapes into a snowflake.

2. How to Create a Snowflake Brush Using the Shape Layers

Step 1

Now we can start to create our brush. Make the background layer Invisible, and then go to Edit > Define Brush Preset, select any name you want to use, and hit the OK button.

Step 2

Now we need to change the brush’s settings to create a complex brush texture. Select the Brush Instrument and hit the Brush Settings icon.

Step 3

Go to the Shape Dynamics panel and set the Size Jitter to 100% and Angle Jitter to 100%.

Step 4

Go to the Scattering panel, set the Scatter to 1000%, and put a tick on Both Axes. Our snowflake brush Photoshop settings are almost ready now—we just need to add some dynamics to the opacity of the snow brush Photoshop preset.

Step 5

Go to the Transfer panel and set the Opacity Jitter to 100%.

Step 6

Click on New Brush Preset to save the settings for the brush.

3. How to Create an Overlay Using a Custom Snowflake Photoshop Brush

Step 1

Open the image you want to use for overlaying, and then create two layers using Shift-Control-N.

Step 2

Select the brush, change the size to 250 px, and draw with this brush on the first empty layer to create an overlaying brush texture.

Step 3

Draw some more snowflakes on the second layer, and finally, to add some motion to the image, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use the following settings: 

• Angle: 90°
• Distance: 25 px

Awesome Work, You’re Now Done!

Congratulations! You have created snowflake brushes and snow overlays for an image using Photoshop shapes and brush instruments. Here is our final result: