In light of the holiday spirit, here's a quick tutorial to show you how to turn your signature or any other image into a wintery wonderland with some animated snow.

You will first need to get yourself familiarized with the tutorial on creating Actions (http://www.mustangforums.com/m_4332734/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm#4332734) if you dont know how to do so already. Also take the time to read the ImageReady tutorial (http://www.mustangforums.com/m_3555578/tm.htm) too if you dont know how to use it, as you will need to use ImageReady to do this.

I decided to use an old signature of mine, but this will work with virtually any picture of any size.

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/5884/screenshot1do8.jpg

Step 1.

After you have your picture of choice open, create a new Action. After you create a new action and its in Record mode, create a new layer, hit Ctrl+A to select the whole layer, and fill it with Black.

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/1714/screenshot2vu0.jpg

Step 2.

Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. You need to have Monochromatic selected, and the Distribution set to Gaussian. What you set the Amount to is up to you. I went with 30%, but you can choose what you like.

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/10/screenshot3na6.jpg

Step 3.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. I set my blur at 0.4 pixels, but again this is up to you. You want it to "fuzz" out the dots, you dont want it so blurry that it completely stretches out all the dots. You just want a hint of blur so they arent 100% sharp.

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/9085/screenshot4qw3.jpg

Step 4.

Now change the layer mode to Screen

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/6060/screenshot5tv3.jpg

http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/7192/screenshot6ev7.jpg

Step 5.

Now its starting to look a little more like snow. You want to now hit the Stop button your Actions palette. Now when you cue the action you just created with the corresponding function key, you will create another layer of snow, with the layer set to screen. You want to hit your function key about 3 times, so you have 4 layers of snow.

Once you do that, we'll export the document to ImageReady by pressing the button at the bottom of the Tools palette that the arrow is pointing to.

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/1517/screenshot7go8.jpg


Step 6.

Hide the top 3 layers of snow, so only the bottom layer of snow and the background picture are the only layers showing.

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3094/screenshot8lc8.jpg

Step 7.

Create a new slide, and hide the bottom layer of snow, and show the next layer of snow. Repeat this step until you have 4 slides, each slide with a different layer of snow.

Once you do this, you can change the delay between the frames (equally for all the frames) to change the speed the snow falls. You will learn how to change frame delays in my ImageReady Tutorial if you have not read it yet.

You can preview your animation by pressing the Play button in the Animation palette. If you are satisfied with your animation, you can click the browser button (the Internet Explorer button, Firefox, or whatever is your default browser).

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1420/screenshot9sx5.jpg

Once your animation is exported to your web browser, you can go and Right Click the picture and Save As to save your animated picture.

Congratulations, you now have a nice snowfall on your picture.

This is now listed under the Photoshop Tutorials sticky under the name "Animated Snow".

Thanks for this! I will give this a shot another time.