Making icicles (5 of 7)

What the barn really needs now are some icicles hanging down from the edges of the roof. There is a great way to make them that uses some of the same steps I have used in previous tutorials for streaks. Refer back to them if you need a review. Start by making a new Alpha channel, make a tall selection with the Rectangular Marquee tool, and fill it with white. Run the Wind filter on it with the options shown. You will have to run it a few times to get long, thin streaks. Transform the channel and rotate it 90º counter-clockwise. Adjust the levels to get a very hard edge with just a bit of anti-aliasing. This is about the same way you would make architectural streaks, except we didn't blur them before the Levels. For icicles, we need longer and sharper shapes than we would need for most streaks and stains you would find on exterior surfaces. 

Since icicles aren't perfectly smooth, we need to roughen them up a bit. There are several filters that could do the job: Sprayed Strokes, Spatter, Ocean Ripple, and perhaps others. I have chosen Sprayed Strokes with very low settings, as you see here. Do some experimenting to see which ones you like best. You may need to run another Levels adjustment on it when you are through, just to sharpen up the edges.

Load this channel as a selection, make a new layer under the rooftop snow layers, and fill it with a light color. Transform it to match the perspective of the scene. Set the layer's Fill to 5% and add some Layer Styles. The look we are trying to achieve here is translucent  and very shiny ice. Give it a Bevel and Emboss as shown. To accentuate the edges, check the Contour option and choose the Ring - Double shape. To really punch up the highlight edges, add an Inner Shadow as you see here. The combination of Screen and Linear Dodge in the same place results in some really bright highlights. I wish I could say that I came up with this technique, but I found it by searching the Internet for Photoshop tutorials long ago. I have modified it a bit to suit my needs, but I don't think I could have figured it out all on my own. Whoever did that initially is a Photoshop genius.

A bit of Gradient Overlay in Linear Dodge will brighten up the icicles just a bit to suggest that they are catching more light the farther away they get from the solid, shadow-casting roof. They look pretty good and it's obvious that they are icicles. Of course, the other side of the barn needs them too, so follow the same steps to add them on a new layer underneath the barn front layers. Since the icicles on this side are not in shadow and more directly affected by the sun, increase the Opacity of the Inner Shadow to pump up the highlights on that side. Now that nature's winter decorations are complete, it's time to turn our attention to the artificial ones.