Step 11: Apply The "Motion Blur" Filter

We need to give our larger snowflakes some motion so they look more realistic in the photo. Go up to the Filter menu, choose Blur, and then choose Motion Blur once again. When the Motion Blur dialog box appears, leave the Angle set to -65° so the larger snowflakes appear to be falling at the same angle as the smaller ones. Since these flakes are larger than the original ones we created, we'll need to increase the length of the motion blur a little bit. Set your Distance option to around 16 pixels:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box. And with that, our main "falling snow" effect is complete:

At this point, if you're happy with the results, you can stop here. If you find that your falling snow is a little hard to see in the image and you want to brighten it up a bit, follow along with the next couple of steps.

Step 12: Merge The Two Snow Layers Together

With the top "Layer 1 copy" layer still selected in the Layers palette, go up to the Layer menu and choose Merge Down:

This will merge the top two layers together, and we can see in the Layers palette that our two snowflakes layers have been merged into "Layer 1":

Step 13: Duplicate "Layer 1"

Now that all of our snowflakes are on a single layer, let's duplicate the layer. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to quickly duplicate it. Our Layers palette shows that we're back to having two snowflakes layers, except this time, each layer contains all of our snowflakes:

With both layers now containing the exact same snowflakes and both layers set to the Screen blend mode, if we look at our image in the document window, we can see that we've doubled the brightness of the falling snow:

Step 14: Lower The Opacity Of The Top Layer

If you find that your falling snow is now too bright, simply lower the opacity of the top layer until you're happy with the results. You'll find the Opacity option directly across from the Blend Mode option at the top of the Layers palette. I'm going to lower mine all the way down to about 35%:

Once you've adjusted the brightness of the snow with the Opacity option, you're done! Here's my final result:

And there we have it!

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