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I’ve been adding tutorials lately that have been teaching you how to add real world type elements to your photos or designs. This one is no exception. This time around, I’m going to show you how to create water drops that add a little extra to your work.
| Step 1 First off, create a new document. This document can be any size. Mine is 200×200 at 72dpi. Also make sure that you make the document "Transparent". The size of the document really doesn’t matter because the water drops are mainly based on "Blending Modes" & "Blending Options". |
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| The new document is created, so now it’s time to work on creating those drops. The first step in doing that is to change the layer’s "Blending Option" to "Screen". |
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Step 2
Next you are going to click on the "Layer Style" icon 
to add more styles to the water drop. Here are the styles that I used along with the settings.
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Now we want to take these options that we just created and create a new "Style" out of them. In the layers palette, double click on one of the styles that you just added to the layer. Then when the dialog box pops up, you’ll see the option for "New Style". Click it, name the style and hit ok. The "Water" style that you just created will now appear in the styles tab.
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Step 3
We have created our style, so now it’s time to apply that style to an image. Choose an image that you want to apply the style to . I chose this pic of an old bearded man mainly because he reminded me of a captain from a fishing boat. Create a new layer, first off. Then using your brush ("B") create some shapes that will end up being your water droplets. Make sure that
you are using black as the colour of the shapes.
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Once you are happy with the way your droplets will look, you will apply the style that we created earlier. Window > Style, to open up the style tab. When the tab pops up, you need to find the "Water" style that you created. If you rest your mouse over the styles, their names will show up. Make sure that you have your layer selected that you painted the drops onto, and click on the "Water" style.
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Once you click on the style, it will be applied to the layer, making your black circles into droplets of water. Also you can edit the layer styles if you want to make the shadows more pronounced. |
-daniel
