How to Cheat in Photoshop

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Posted on 29/08/07 10:24:14 PM

Meltonian
Highlight Hermit
Posts: 90

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DIY water effect

Since I had a couple of requests about the water effect I used for Friday Challenge 161, here's what I did. I should point out that I got the basic method from the August 2007 edition of Digital Photo (UK) magazine and just played around with colouring afterwards.

1. Create a new RGB document - 1000px wide x 2000px high, 300ppi, white background.
2. Filter > Noise > Add noise. Amount 400%, distribution Gaussian, monochromatic.
3. Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur. Radius 2px.
4. Go to the channels and select the red channel.
5. Filter > Stylize > Emboss. Angle 180 degrees, height 1px, amount 500%.
6. Do the same on the green channel but change the angle to 90 degrees.
7. Select the RGB channel.
8. Zoom out so your document is about 25% then Select > All.
9. Go to Edit > Transform > Perspective. Pull the bottom left corner until it reads about 600%. Press enter and then (importantly!) deselect.
10. Select all again and then repeat step 9.
11. Go to Image > Image size, then untick Constrain Proportions and change the height to 1000px so that your image is square.

Now you have a basic water effect which you can colour. For the Friday Challenge in question I mirrored the image to make it wider (converted background image to a layer, doubled the canvas width, duplicated the layer, flipped it horizontally and then lined them up side by side) so that the ripples were more subtle. To colour it I used a layer filled with blue at 30% opacity and another layer filled with dark green set to 50% opacity. Then I used a further layer with a white to green gradient at a low opacity (all these layers were in the 'normal' blending mode). Finally I used the dodging and burning tools sparingly to enhance the lighting.

Posted on 29/08/07 11:04:48 PM

katew
Virtual Virtuoso
Posts: 681

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Re: DIY water effect

Thanks Meltonian. I've just tried it and it works a treat!

Posted on 29/08/07 11:11:38 PM

chris berry
Overhead Overlord
Posts: 724

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DIY water effect

Clever colouring technique. When I followed the original tutorial for this it was way too strong an effect. Wasn't til I saw what you did that made me try it again. Liked the mirror technique you use to soften the ripples. I ended up using less noise and about 2000% perspective which gave a similar effect.

Posted on 30/08/07 07:03:45 AM

tooquilos
Wizard of Oz
Posts: 2880

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Re: DIY water effect

Thank you Graham for the great tutorial. The water looks extremely realistic. Good stuff.

Now for the bigger challenge though...how do we turn it into wine?