Adding Water to a Picture

Step 1

Open up your image. Landscapes images usually work best with this method, but you can try it on anything. Take a look at the image and see where you would like to put the water, pay special attention to the details such as where water might happen to flow into cracks, crevices etc.

Step 2

Create a new layer and use the rectangular marquee to draw a box around the general area where you want the water. Press D for default colors then go to filter>render>clouds. Deselect by pressing ctrl-d.

Step 3

Duplicate the background layer and move the duplicate on top of the clouds layer. Now with the duplicate layer selected, go to edit>transform>flip vertical to turn it upside down. Hold down the alt button on your keyboard and click in between the two layers. This will create a clipping layer .

Step 4

Make sure the duplicate layer is selected and select the Move Tool . Hold down shift on your keyboard and use the keyboard down arrow to move the image down until it is a 'reflection'. Let go of the shift key and use the down arrow to fine tune the move.

Step 5

With the duplicate layer still highlighted, go to filter>distort>ripple to give it a little bit of a ripple to taste. I used medium and 100% in this example. Set the opacity down to about 50%.

Step 6

Now click on the clouds layer and choose the Eraser tool , set the brush to a soft edge brush. This part really depends on your picture in general, but try to erase the parts of this layer where objects might be extruding into the water. In this example, I erased it most where the rocks would be coming out into the water, and let the water go deeper into the crevices. In the below example I highlighted in red the line where I erased.

Step 7

Go to blending options on the clouds layer and add a stroke. Set the position to outside, fill type to gradient, style to shape burst, size to about 4, opacity to about 30%, and use a transparent -> black gradient. To set the gradient to transparent -> black click on the gradient bar to open up the gradient editor. Set both colors to black, and set the opacity on the left-hand side to 0 like in the below diagram.

Step 8

Now create a new layer above all the other layers and with a soft brush , paint black in places where shadows might be coming from the rocks.

Step 9

Set the opacity on the shadow layer to about 70 or so. You should now have a good beginning to some realistic water. From here you'll want to add any highlights/features you want, and adjust the opacity and underlying colors depending on what type of environment and sky your image is using.