Sponsored by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Learn More

Create Water Effect

 

Fill a swimming pool with water in seconds! Well, create the appearance of a swimming pool filled with water in Photoshop in just four steps. We’ll use the Clouds, Crystallize, Gaussian Blur, and Glass filters to create rippling water. Make your foreground color a light blue and the background color a dark blue. Create a new image, or add a layer, or make a selection. Filter> Render> Clouds. (This filter has no user-definable settings and so is applied without a dialog box.)

Filter> Pixelate> Crystallize. Use a Cell Size setting appropriate for the size of your image. For a low-resolution, relatively small image, a Cell Size of 25-40 is adequate. Larger images will require a higher setting.

Applying a Gaussian Blur softens the cells created with the previous filter. For this image, a radius of five pixels is suitable. For larger images, a more substantial blur is necessary. The goal is to blur not only the edges of the cells, but to soften the appearance generally.

We’ll add ripples to the perceived surface of the water with the filter Distort> Glass. In Photoshop CS, the Filter Gallery will open. In earlier versions of Photoshop, the Glass dialog box will open. The options are the same, only the interface differs. The values for the Distortion, Smoothness, and Scaling depend on your image size. However, regardless of image size, the Texture pop-up menu should be set to Frosted.

Add a “see-ment pond” (for those old enough to remember “The Beverly Hillbillies” or add a new layer, create a selection around the outside of the water, fill with color, apply a texture or grain, and add a bevel layer style that mimics the lighting in the image.

7 Comments

  1. fabrizio said on — August 31, 2008 @ 12:04 pm

    WOW!!! Fast and effective

  2. Manish said on — February 8, 2009 @ 7:14 am

    very nice

  3. Cat said on — April 13, 2009 @ 6:38 am

    Ha! Pretty cool :)

  4. xd said on — February 9, 2010 @ 7:08 pm

    the perspective is way off

  5. SANDEEP said on — June 12, 2010 @ 2:38 am

    Looking good

  6. Dante said on — August 12, 2010 @ 1:17 am

    Using noise and motion blur to 50 pix is a much better looking effect

  7. ravinder said on — October 14, 2010 @ 1:56 am

    good sir, i want to know how to make real fire animaton

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Photoshop Tutorials

  • Flare Effects

    Corey has a cool trick for creating a flare brush and see how one effect can lead to another.

  • Hollywood Touch-Ups

    See how you can add some subtle touches to give that green screen studio shot the Hollywood treatment.

  • 3D Christmas Ornaments

    Corey shows how to create reflective holiday ornaments using 3D in Photoshop.

  • 3D Distortions

    This week Corey has a cool new trick for using 3D reflections in a rather creative way!

Premium Video Tutorials From NAPP


 

Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

Read More Tips

Tip of the Day
 
 
Kelby Training
 
DVD Special
Online Training
Kelby Training