:: Snowman Creator ©2007 Caballus::

Content is protected under copyright law and may not be redistributed without prior written permission from the Author.


Product Description:
The Snowman Creator is a collection of layered Photoshop files. With it, you can create unique graphics of differently looking snowmen. The possible variations are endless. It contains a customizable background graphic, which provides you with a winter environment to populate with your creations, and helps you to design greeting cards with your snowman graphics.

The product contains the following files:
Snowman.psd – a layered Photoshop file which you can use to create a variety of snowmen with different kind of props. It contains 103 layers, which allows almost infinite combinations. The layers are grouped to help you navigate between them.

Snowchild.psd – a layered Photoshop file. You can use it to create many different looking snowmen. These snowmen are smaller, and more childlike in appearance. This file contains 95 layers. These are also placed in groups for your convenience.

Props.psd – a layered Photoshop file which contains all the props from the previous files, in their original, unmodified form. You can use them in combination with the snowmen and the background to produce further variations. It contains 18 layers.

Background.psd – a layered Photoshop file of a simple winter scene with snowy hills and falling snow. You can make a daytime or nighttime scene, and have some other options. It also contains different greeting texts in two different fonts.

All the files are high resolution ones, with a resolution of 300 dpi, suitable for quality prints. They can be used to produce 4 × 6 inch greeting cards.


Requirements:
Any program, which can open layered Photoshop files. It was tested in Photoshop CS2.


All of this product's content was created by Mayer Laszlo (Caballus) ©2007


Installation instructions:
Unzip the files to a folder of your choice with your unzipping program. Open the files with Photoshop, or another program which can open layered Photoshop files.

Tips for effective use:

Create one or more snowmen using the Snowman.psd or the Snowchild.psd files, or both of them.

In the snowman files, some layers can be combined, while other combinations produce a nonsensical or ugly result. Experiment with them to see which combinations work well. All props have two variations. If your snowman wears a mitten on the hand which holds the prop, use the prop layer which has “for mitten” in its name. Otherwise, use the other layer.

If you are pleased with the result, merge all the layers except the dropshadow of the snowman (and of the prop, if it has one) and the background (turn off the visibility of the background and dropshadow layer by clicking on the little eye icon on the Layers Palette before the layer thumbnail, then select “Merge visible” from the palette menu). Then switch back on the visibility of the dropshadow, and link the shadow and the merged snowman graphic. Delete the other layers by selecting “Delete Hidden Layers” from the Layers palette menu. Save the file with a unique name so you can use it later.

Open the Background.psd file, and create a background picture for your snowmen. You can make the daytime or nighttime sky and mounds visible to make a daytime or nighttime scene. You can turn the snow layer on or off, and you can add a little motion blur to the falling snow by making visible the “Snow - blurred” layer. You can add a subtle shading effect to the image by turning on the “Foreground shadow” and “Background shadow” layers, or turn them off if you want a more uniformly colored sky and foreground. 

Add one or more of your previously created snowmen to the background image by dragging them from their window into the background image. Position and scale them with the Edit/Free Transform menu command to make them a part of the image. It is quite possible that you will have to scale them down a bit. If you use more than one in an image, remember that you have to place them higher, and scale them smaller to make them appear far in the image. The Background file contains a snowman graphic to show you an example placement. Replace it with your own creations.

Add some text to the image if you want to turn it into a greeting card. You can choose from different pre-made texts, or you can add your own with a font of your choice. You can add layer effects to your custom texts to make them more interesting.

If you are pleased with the result, save your composition with a unique name.

If you want to print the picture, leave the “Crop marks” layer’s visibility on so you can cut it out after printing. If you do not have a cutting knife and ruler, you can cut it with scissors. In this case, you can turn on the “Crop box” layer to guide you.

Very important! Before printing, set the pictures color mode to cmyk by selecting Image/Mode/CMYK Color from the menu. If you do not do this, the colors of your print can be very different from the picture on your screen. If you want to use the picture on screen, leave the color mode on RGB.

If you want to use the picture on screen (send as an e-mail attachment, or upload to a web page), save the picture as a .jpg file by selecting File/Save As. In this case, you can crop the image, removing the surrounding white area before you save it, and resize the image to a smaller size.


Files list:
Snowman.psd
Snowchild.psd
Props.psd
Background.psd