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joet082964
joet082964
Inspiring
August 17, 2017
Answered

Adding water drops to an image

  • August 17, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 4620 views

Hello friends,

I have a PSD I'm trying to add some water droplets to, but need some advice.  I'm using stock images of the drops on the gray unit and setting the blend mode to Overlay, and with some additional editing, I'm pretty happy with that result.

The problem is, I can't figure out a good way to make somewhat-realistic drops on the red "floor". I watched a few Youtube videos on adding droplets, and still can't get the results to look decent.  I've tried stock images with red, white, gray, and black backgrounds, messed with transparency and blending modes, but it seems I have reached my current skills limit. 😞

Thanks - and hints and/or advice would be great!

This will be used primarily in print.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer davescm

    Hi

    You could try something like this :

    Draw a couple of droplet shapes an create a brush from each using Edit Define Brush preset . I've just used two for this emo - you could use a few more to vary the shapes a bit

    Create a new empty layer and turn the fill to 0%

    Add three layer effects as shown below :
    Bevel and Emboss to light the top of the drops:

    Stroke using a gradient in shape burst and luminosity blend mode to shape the light on the drops

    Drop shadow underneath the drops

    Now use the brushes you made to paint on the layer at 100 hardness and use black (actually any colour will do as fill is zero)

    Dave

    2 replies

    joet082964
    joet082964Author
    Inspiring
    August 22, 2017

    Thanks Trevor and Dave. Both options worked well but we ended up in another direction. I appreciate your time.

    davescm
    Community Expert
    davescmCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    August 17, 2017

    Hi

    You could try something like this :

    Draw a couple of droplet shapes an create a brush from each using Edit Define Brush preset . I've just used two for this emo - you could use a few more to vary the shapes a bit

    Create a new empty layer and turn the fill to 0%

    Add three layer effects as shown below :
    Bevel and Emboss to light the top of the drops:

    Stroke using a gradient in shape burst and luminosity blend mode to shape the light on the drops

    Drop shadow underneath the drops

    Now use the brushes you made to paint on the layer at 100 hardness and use black (actually any colour will do as fill is zero)

    Dave

    Trevor.Dennis
    Community Expert
    Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 17, 2017

    I'll play

    Very similar to Dave, because the zero fill with Layer Styles is definitely the way to go.

    I'll start with the brush, which needs to be just a little bit special.

    Set the Elliptical Shape tool to path, and make a vertical ellipse.

    Use the Direct selection tool to make the path pear shaped.

    Fill the path on a new layer

    Use the blur tool to blur the upper third of the filled path

    Define it as a new brush preset

    From here pretty much like Dave, but there are several ways to get there.

    Stamp down your new brush on a new layer.

    For the drop below I used Bevel & Emboss with both shadow and highlight opacity set pretty low

    Drop shadow at 90° with a touch of Size to soften.

    Inner Shadow with colour set to white and blend mode to Screen.

    And fill opacity set to zero.

    And that little extra touch, a white highlight on another layer. You could combine the two layers into a Smart Object, and use New Smart Object via Copy to make more of them (otherwise resizing one would resize them all).

    The screen shot below is zoomed to 200%, so a wee bit pixelated.

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