Snowglobes seem to be a popular bitmap project these days, so I thought I'd join the crowd and give it a whirl too. Pardon the pun.

This tutorial contains quite a few images. I hope you'll agree that more pictures make it easier to follow along and will forgive the extra bandwidth they impose.

My friend Ron Reznick has again graciously let me "borrow" one of his great photographs for a Photo-Paint Place project. The "Witch House" is in Beverly Hills, California and is one of the most interesting houses I've ever (virtually) seen. Ron's high resolution digital photographs of this house are quite beautiful and I highly recommend you take a look at these and his other photographs. Ron's websites can be found at http://www.trapagon.com and http://www.digital-images.net. Click here for a direct link to the Witch House photo seen in the snowglobe.

The first step is to decide exactly what you want inside your snowglobe. I knew the Witch House would be perfect for this project -- it looks like it jumped right out of a fairy tale. But I also knew that I wanted it to be atop some hills, and with a bit of mist floating around it and Ron's photo was missing those last two elements. No problem! I simply found a couple of stock photographs in Corel's Stock Photo Library 4 that fit the bill and used the pieces from them that I needed.

The images at the right and below make up the photographic components of the final snowglobe image. Each was masked for later copying into the snowglobe working file.

The hills (Image 738063) and sky (Image 738068) photographs are from the Landscapes IV CD of the Corel Stock Photo Library 4). The Witch House is courtesy of Ron Resnick. You must have Ron's permission to use his photographs in your own images.

Now that the snowglobe contents are collected and ready to go, it's time to start building the snowglobe itself. To begin, create a new Photo-Paint image and save it as SNOWGLOBE.CPT. My working image was approximately 600x400 pixels at 100 pixels per inch (ppi). The final snowglobe image is smaller, but in the working file I left room to move objects around.

Copy and paste the elements for the snowglobe contents into the SNOWGLOBE.CPT image. Don't worry yet about the final arrangement.

Now it's time to add the base the snowglobe will rest upon. You can create your own from scratch or from your own photographs -- photos of lamp bases work well -- or, like me, you can use one of the snowglobe bases available from the Photo-Paint Place Freebies. Click here to go to the spraylist page.

Next, set the fill color to white. Then select the Elipse tool from the Toolbox and with the Render to Object property bar button pressed, hold Control to draw a perfect circle to fit inside the snowglobe base. Open the Objects docker (Ctrl+F7) and set opacity for the circle object to about 35. Doubleclick the circle object in the Objects docker to open the Object Properties dialog. Rename the object to Globe. Repeat for the base object, renaming it to Base. You should custom name the image objects as you progress so you can easily find them in the Objects docker.

Now it's time to arrange the Globe, Base, and other content objects. The Base image should be at the top of the stack (Ctrl+PgUp), the Globe next, and the contents for the globe on the bottom. Your image should resemble the image below, but of course your globe's contents will differ. Just in case you were wondering, the hills behind the Witch House are merely a flipped, blurred, and darkened copy of the hills in front of the Witch House. The blurring and darkening add depth and allow the Witch House to really stand out.

The next few steps to create the mist floating around the bottom of the Witch House are optional and which may or may not be appropriate for your own image.

To begin, create a new object and move it behind the Globe and Base objects. Set the Paint color to white. (The examples are shown here with a black background for clarity only.) Select the Custom Spray Can Brush using the default brush settings and paint 2 or 3 strokes. Your brush strokes should resemble the strokes in the top image at the left.

Select the Wind filter from the Effects menu. Set Strength to 34, Angle to 90, and Opacity to 100. Click Apply. Your image should now resemble the middle image to the left.

Next, select the Whirlpool efffect filter. Set Spacing to 70, Smear Length to 30, Streak Detail to 0, and Twist to 90. You may wish to save this as a Whirlpool preset for use on other images. Click Apply. Your "mist" object should resemble the bottom image at the left and the image below.

Now it's time to give the Globe a 3D appearance. Select the Globe object and create a mask from the object (Ctrl+M). Save the mask channel as Alpha 1. The masked Globe object is shown in the image below.

Select the mask with the Mask Transform tool shown below. This tool is a flyout tool accessible by holding the Pick tool until you see the flyout.

With the Mask Transform tool, hold Shift and drag the mask inward using a corner handle. Reduce the mask concentrically about 5-10 pixels using this method. The actual amount of reduction depends on the size of your Globe.

Select any mask tool and then click the XOR mask button on the property bar. Load the mask channel you saved as Alpha 1. Your mask should now resemble the mask shown in the image below.

Create a new object from a copy of the mask (Ctrl+UpArrow). Rename it to Blur Edge. Your new object should look like the object in the image below. Be sure the Blur Edge object is above the Globe object but below the Base object. (It is still above the Base object in the image below.)

Select the Blur Edge object and check the Objects docker to be sure that Object Transparency is unlocked. Apply the Gaussian Blur effect at a radius of 4.5. Your image should resemble the image below. Can you see that it's looking more like real glass already?

For this next step, it is important that the Blur Edge object be directly above the Globe object. Select the Blur Edge object on the Objects docker and click the area directly to the left of the object preview icon. A paperclip icon will appear in the docker (see the image below), signifying that the object is "clipped" into the object directly beneath it. The Blur Edge will now be contained completely within the Globe object and none of the blurring outside the perimeter of the Globe will be visible. Your clipped Edge Blur object should resemble the image below.

The next step is to select all the globe content objects. In the example image, the Witch House, mist, front and back hills, and sky objects are the globe content objects. Combine the selected objects together (Ctrl+Alt+DnArrow). Rename these combined objects to Inside.

The Inside object should be at the bottom of the stacking order. The Globe object should be just above the Inside object. The Blur Edge object, with its clip still in place, should be just above the Globe object. Finally, the Base object should be at the top.

Select the Inside object and load mask channel Alpha 1. Go to Object>Clip Mask>Create>From Mask. If you are familiar with CorelDRAW, this feature is very similar to CorelDRAW's Powerclip effect. The whole object is still intact, but the areas outside of the container (the mask) are hidden (clipped). The Object docker reflects the clip mask as shown below.

Once you are satisfied with the placement of your Inside object, select all of the objects floating above the Background and combine them together (Ctrl+Alt+DnArrow).

To create the reflection shown in the image below, set the Fill color to white and select the Elipse tool. Turn on Render to Object on the property bar and draw a circle in the upper left of the globe. Apply a Gaussian Blur to the circle at about a 6.5 radius. Then set the reflection object's transparency to 80. Combine this object with your snowglobe object (Ctrl+Alt+DnArrow).

If you want to add snow inside your new snowglobe, create a new object/layer above the snowglobe. Set the Fill color to white and select the Elipse tool. Turn off Render to Object on the property bar and draw a number of small white circles over the globe. Apply a slight Gaussian Blur to the snow object. Load mask channel Alpha 1 and use the Eraser tool to clean up any stray snowflakes outside the globe glass. Delete Alpha 1 from the Channels docker. Your snowglobe is complete!

In the image at the top of this tutorial, drop shadows were added for greater realism and two more layers of snow were added for the animation.

© Copyright 2000 by Deborah J. Cook