In part 1 of Creating a Winter Night in Photoshop, we completed a starry night sky with northern lights and snowy hills. Now we're going to finish the scene up with some snowy pine trees, and some soft light reflections from the Aurora Borealis!

Part 2 - Finishing the Scene

Step 11: Drawing the Pine Trees

Time to add some pine trees to our scene! To do this I got out Illustrator and used the pencil tool to freehand two trees, each with three sections. I made them black because color doesn't matter at this point; we're going to be coloring them the same way we did our snow hills. If you don't have Illustrator, you can create your tree sections in Photoshop using the pen tool.

Step 12: Ordering the Trees in Photoshop

Next I dragged each section of tree from the Illustrator window onto my open Photoshop document, and made sure they were in correct order (top piece on top, middle piece below the top layer, and bottom piece below the middle layer). I gave each tree its own group folder in my layers palette, so it would be easy to distinguish the individual trees. Since I wanted three trees but I only drew two, I duplicated one tree group, changed its height and size, and flipped it horizontally to make it look a little different from its twin. Once I had the three trees' layers organized, I positioned each tree where I wanted it to be in my scene.

Step 13: Coloring the Trees

Next we need to color our snowy trees. Open up your Snow group folder, right click on your top snow hill layer, and select "Copy Layer Style". Now select all three tree groups in your layers palette, right click and click "Paste Layer Style". We need to change the way the gradients display on the trees, however. On the snow hills we wanted the blue at the bottom, but with the trees we want the blue to show up at the top of each piece, giving the illusion of a shadow from the branches from the upper section of tree. To do this, double click on of the tree section layers to open the layer style panel. In the Gradient Overlay panel, check "Reverse" next to the gradient drop-down. You may also want to darken the blue color in the gradient for a more pronounced shadow. Now just copy that layer's style and paste it to the other tree layers.

Step 14: Giving the Trees Shadows

Now we need to add shadows beneath the trees. Use your color picker to change the foreground color to a medium gray-blue. Break out your brush tool and select a soft round brush of about 100px. Create a new layer below your tree groups, and paint a shadow beneath each tree as shown below. Don't worry if it isn't absolutely perfect; we'll soften the shadows up in the next step.

Step 15: Softening the Tree Shadows

To soften the tree shadows a bit more, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and make the blur about 25 pixels. Then change the blend mode of the tree shadow layer to Multiply.

Step 16: Adding Colored Light Reflections to the Trees

Almost done! Let's add some reflected colored light from the Aurora Borealis to our trees. To do this, you need to merge your tree groups together into one layer (you may want to duplicate each tree group, so you can keep the originals in tact just in case). Now duplicate your aurora layer, flip it vertically (Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical), and drag it so that it is positioned above your tree layer in your layers palette. Right click on this layer and choose "Create Clipping Mask" to clip the aurora layer to your trees. Change the layer's blend mode to Overlay, and move it around until the color displays on the trees the way you want it to. 

Step 17: Adding Color Reflections to the Snow

Last step! We're going to add light reflections to the snow the same way we did with our trees. Merge the Snow group and tree shadow layers together, duplicate the aurora layer and flip it vertically, position the new aurora layer above the merged snow layer in your layers palette, and clip the aurora layer to it (right click on the aurora layer and select "Create Clipping Mask"). Change the aurora's blend mode to Overlay, and then move the layer so that the colors display on the snow as desired. Adjust the opacity of the aurora layer to lessen the intensity if needed.

And we're done! The end result is a colorful wintery night scene, perfect for the winter holidays! In my December wallpaper I added a gold star to the top of one of my trees, and added a linear calendar for the month of December. Try dressing up your scene with some creative typography, or maybe some winter critters of your own creation! Feel free to leave comments with links to your results following this tutorial--I'd love to see what you come up with! Happy Holidays!