Adding Water Bubbles Tutorial

The goal is to create a drop of water. I'm making mine on a leaf, but I guess you could do this on other objects as well (maybe fruits or vegetables to give them that fresh look).

The end result will be like this:

STEP 1
The first step is to find a picture of the object you want to do, here's mine:

STEP 2
a) Create a new layer and select it by click on its name.

b) Double click on the layer’s name and change it to “waterdrop”.

STEP 3

a) Use the ellipse select tool to make a circular or slightly ellipse shaped selection.

b) Use the gradient tool to fill it with a black to white gradient. See the image below.

STEP 4
Set the blending mode of the waterdrop layer to "overlay". To do this, you simply need to double click on the layer name and change the blending mode in the window that appears.

The image below shows you what you should have.



STEP 5

a) Create yet another layer.

b) Name it "drop shadow".

STEP 6

a) Select the waterdrop layer.

b) Select the Magic Wand tool and set the Tolerance to 0%.

c) Click on the canvas anywhere outside the water drop. This will select everything but the drop.

d) We want to select only the drop so we must invert the selection. You can do this by hitting CTRL-i or by choosing Edit > Invert Selection.

STEP 7

a) Select the drop shadow layer.

b) Fill your selection with black.

STEP 8

a) Remove the selection (by clicking away from the selection or hitting CTRL-d).

b) Choose the Move Selected Pixels tool (top right tool in toolbar).

c) Move the drop shadow layer a slight bit to the right and bottom. In the next picture you can sort of see how much I've moved it.

STEP 9

a) Select the waterdrop layer.

b) Use the magic wand to select the drop like before. The steps were:

· Select the Magic Wand tool and set the Tolerance to 0%.

· Click on the canvas anywhere outside the water drop. This will select everything but the drop.

· We want to select only the drop so we must invert the selection. You can do this by hitting CTRL-i or by choosing Edit > Invert Selection.

STEP 10 & 11 (Revised Apr 2011)

We now have the original waterdrop selected. We want to delete any shadow that is directly underneath it.

a) Select the drop shadow layer.

b) Use the eraser tool to erase the drop shadow that is inside the selection.

STEP 12
a) Remove the selection (by clicking away from the selection or hitting CTRL-d).

b) Apply a Gaussian Blur effect (Effects > Blurs > Gaussian Blur) to the drop shadow layer. I used a setting of 10px.

STEP 13

a) Pick the Move Selected Pixels tool in the toolbar.

b) Click and drag anywhere on the canvas to move the drop shadow layer back to it's original position (only a tiny bit, to imply the effect of seeing the edge of the drop's shadow through itself.

STEP 14

a) Finally, move your drop shadow layer under your waterdrop layer in the layers panel.

STEP 15
a) As a final touch, create a new layer (named "highlight") and select it.

b) Choose the Paintbrush tool from the toolbar.

c) Be sure that Antialiasing enabled is selected in options for that tool. (See image below)

d) Put a small white dot at the left top of the droplet to create the effect of a highlight.

The end result (as shown before):

Play around a bit with various settings and distances to get results to your tastes (slightly lowering the opacity of the waterdrop layer adds a touch of softness).

POSSIBLE ADDITION

Try using the sphere option in the Shape3D plugin to give a more round effect.

This tutorial was taken from the following url:

http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3790&sid=35350555a66f03798398092609aa6480

The author’s name is unknown. The author’s alias is Eraesr.