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40 Photoshop Tutorials On Rain Showers and Water Drops
With fall just around the corner, designers are looking for ways to complement their work with fall imagery like water droplets, rain on leaves and fall rain showers. Including rain or water drops in a scene can be a nice effect because water is a very compelling element. As you’ll see in the tutorials below, water drops and rain can completely change the dynamic of a design or photo.
Adding the illusion of water and rain to photographs using Photoshop can be a bit tricky. Many times the effect feels forced and cheesy, as if you’re looking at a grainy picture instead of an authentic rain shower. The tutorials below will give any designer inspiration for incorporating water scenes in fall designs and showcase some amazing water work by excellent designers. You’ll learn how to create realistic photos.
Here are other collections of Photoshop tutorials from Smashing Magazine:
- 50 Photoshop Tutorials for Sky and Space
- Adobe Photoshop Tutorials: Best Of
- Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorials: Best Of
- 70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials
Water Drop Tutorials
Basic water drops
An excellent tutorial showing how to make artistic, realistic water drops.
Designing a war movie poster
A step-by-step tutorial that teaches how to design a dark movie poster with water drops.
The Making Of “Our Future”
It is not really a tutorial, but the designer’s description provides some insight into how this poster was designed.
Artistic rain on an illustration
Beautiful example of adding rain to a dark illustration.
Alien Water Photoshop Tutorial
With this Photoshop tutorial you learn how to make realistic alien-looking water.
The Rain Photoshop Tutorial
A simple Photoshop tutorial that will teach you how to embed water drops in dark sci-fi image.
Artistic rain effect
Create a complex composition with rain.
Displacement Water Photoshop Tutorial
The following tutorial shows how to create a relatively simple displacement map and how to create a water surface with it. This method does not adjust for wave height and distances, but it produces good results if the water is calm and if the surface is not intersected by other elements.
Water effect photo montage
An extremely creative way to turn a person into water.
Water Dress
Creating a Gisele Bundchen water dress
Waterdrops Photoshop Tutorial (video)
“In this video I’ll show you how to make realistic water drops. This is nothing original as I have learned this from other tutorials. I have
made some slight adjustments to suit my taste. Very simple to do. Have fun.”
Waterdrops in 5 Minutes
The basic idea to keep in mind when creating water drops is that they are a bit complex and they have highlights, shadows, transparencies, inner shadows and inner highlights. The best way to achieve these effects is by using the Layer Styles in Photoshop. You’ll be using shadow, inner shadow, inner glow, glow, bevel and many more.
Leaf drop tutorial
Big stylized leaf drops.
Add A Rainbow To A Photo
In this Photoshop photo effects tutorial, we’re going to learn how to easily add a rainbow, even a double rainbow, to a photo. Of course, as with most photo effects, it helps if you start with the right type of image.
Create Silky Smooth Waterfalls
In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial you are going to look at how to give waterfalls a silky smooth appearance, as if the photo was taken with a longer exposure which would normally require the use of a neutral density filter.
The Ocean’s Freshness Photo Effects
This tutorial teaches how to create a wallpaper in a fresh “ocean” style. Original illustration.
Water Drops
So realistic, these water drops (and optional ice drops) are also simple to do anywhere, anytime.
Rainy Day Animation Using Photoshop
“Today let’s try to make something special like an artificial rain drop using our Adobe Photoshop. Just follow the simple steps. Hope that you will enjoy the tutorial.”
Create Water Droplets Tutorial
Here are visual step-by-step instructions to quickly create realistic
water droplets. This tutorial assumes a basic knowledge of how to use Photoshop layers.
Rain Drops
“This is a technique I came up with when Photoshop version 6 came out. I was experimenting with some of the more advanced features of the Layer Styles dialog box and discovered some very handy techniques that can be used when you are creating transparent effects.”
Water Shower Out of an Elephant’s Trunk
Create a Waterdrop
Older tutorial for Photoshop CS1
Water/Liquid Effects Tutorial Using Adobe Photoshop CS3 (video)
Water Drops! (YouTube video)
Drops on a Coke bottle.
Add A Snow To A Photo
This very easy tutorial will tell you how you can add snow to your photo.
Water drops on a spiderweb
Great effect for creating dewy spiderwebs.
Leaf drops
Realistic water droplets on leaves.
Adding water drops to waves
Excellent tutorial on spicing up an action photo, like of surfing, with water.
Reflective writing with water
A great tutorial on how to write with reflective water lines.
Ripple Tutorials
Great tutorial on how to create water ripples in Illustrator, but not Photoshop unfortunately.

This tutorial is contained in a single picture.
Creating Water In Photoshop
“This is going to be a quick tutorial on how to create a water effect in Photoshop. This tutorial doesn’t take long and you can get a really awesome effect that does surprisingly look like water. Hopefully by the end you should end up with something like this.”
Running Water Tutorial
Create incredibly realistic flowing water.
Realistic water running on tap
“Through this tutorial, we will learn how to use a combination of Photoshop filters to create a realistic effect of water running from a tap. Requires Photoshop CS2 or later.”
Water Running Effect – Photoshop CS3 Tutorial
“In this tutorial we will show you how to create a water running effect in Photoshop CS3.”
Seamless Water Texture
“In addition to using it for image backgrounds, this texture makes a great reflection map for more complicated works such as chrome objects.”
Rain Tutorials
Transform a daylight image into a dark and stormy night
Amazing tutorial that shows how to modify a perfectly sunny image into a night picture with nasty elements.
Filtered rain effect
Learn how to use several filters to get a rain effect in photos.
Photoshop tutorial make rain cloud lighthouse
Rain Effect
Learn how to create an artificial rain effect. Follow this simple tutorial that shows how to add a rain effect to any image using Photoshop CS.
Rainy streets
Take a perfectly dry street and make it look rain-soaked.
Photoshop Brushes
Obsidian Dawn has created a couple of sets of Photoshop brushes that can greatly aid in the creation of water effects. You can find bubbles, drops, tears, rain, splashes and many other elements from this first set of brushes, Photoshop water brush set I. The second set of Photoshop brushes is similar to the first, except with a much higher resolution: Photoshop water brush set II.
Besides: Vector Water Drops in Adobe Illustrator, Rain – Tear Drop Brushes
Related Resources
Here are some other tutorials and Photoshop tutorials from Smashing Magazine:
- 50 Photoshop Tutorials for Sky and Space
- Adobe Photoshop Tutorials: Best Of
- Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorials: Best Of
- 70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials
Glen Stansberry writes for the web development blog Web Jackalope (feed).
(al)
Glen Stansberry is the editor at Web Jackalope, a blog about creative Web development.
- 58 Comments
- 1
- 2September 25th, 2008 11:51 am
Aww, Water effect photo montage looks like Shinybinary’s tutorial for DA, but it is more detailed :) Nice collection of tutorials, good job. ;)
Second :proud: =D
- 3September 25th, 2008 11:53 am
yep, really nice techniques! thanks 2 Smash 4 a post!
- 4September 25th, 2008 11:55 am
A good selection of tutorials here…
11:53am? In the UK its 9pm. - 5September 25th, 2008 12:27 pm
Nice post. I love how easy some of these effects are. They give each photo a totally different feel. I love the Andrei Bilan under water effect. The water effect photo montage is also very cool – great detail.
onwired.com
- 6September 25th, 2008 1:34 pm
Some are cool but others are lame. The “waterdrops to waves” looks like a 3rd grader did it.
- 7September 25th, 2008 2:03 pm
I cannot say anything more but its a great article. with lots of resources as always.
After gone through few of the examples I feel I need to learn a lot of new things. lol
- 8September 25th, 2008 2:15 pm
Cool stuff. lulz
- 9September 25th, 2008 2:54 pm
Wonderful effect on the “Water Dress”. It’s a good effect in web design
- 10September 25th, 2008 3:07 pm
Great! thank you!
- 11September 25th, 2008 3:34 pm
The very classical source material, thanks
- 12September 25th, 2008 4:53 pm
非常喜欢。
I like it very much!
thanks - 13September 25th, 2008 6:03 pm
Hey! You might also like a couple of my water drops tutorials:
- 14September 25th, 2008 6:06 pm
Muito boa a galeria de Tutoriais….^.^)
Great Job, thank you !!!!!!!!!!!! In Brazil now its 11pm.
- 15September 25th, 2008 8:16 pm
great tutorials and collection.thanks a lot
Ronald
- 16
- 17September 25th, 2008 9:16 pm
It’s very good job! There is very interesting and usefull information for me… big thanks to smashingmagazine.com!
- 18September 25th, 2008 9:43 pm
yeah, I’d say mixed bag. There are definitely some decent ones here, but I’d rather see consistent quality rather than a big selection with a bunch of unimpressive tuts mixed in.
- 19September 25th, 2008 11:15 pm
Smashing delivers. good job :)
- 20September 25th, 2008 11:58 pm
Absolutely love the artistic rain effect and the Alien water ! … The basic water drops tutorial will surely be useful for banners for a couple of products that we sell. Once again, great to see everything in one place ! .. Good job guys ! Keep us inspired !!
- 21September 26th, 2008 2:16 am
Wow, these are great! I want to learn Photoshop, just have to get one :D
I think my school gives it for free, I go now and check it out - 22September 26th, 2008 3:45 am
You guys are God to US… :)
Cheerios …
- 23September 26th, 2008 4:08 am
Awesome tutorials, more food for thought at lunch!
- 24September 26th, 2008 4:40 am
Whoa…fantastic list. Thankyou!
- 25September 26th, 2008 8:14 am
Excellent article ! Thanx
- 26September 26th, 2008 8:29 am
Rather unimpressed by the whole bunch… none (or at least a majority) of them appear realistic or well done in my opinion. I look forward to an explosion of terrible looking water effects on the internet. :(
- 27September 26th, 2008 9:18 am
Apologies Smashing, I do love you guys, but there are some very bad tutorials there.
- 28September 26th, 2008 11:49 am
very impressive i must say..
- 29September 26th, 2008 12:46 pm
You miss this tut (below the article) Underwater
- 30September 26th, 2008 2:29 pm
haha spot the typo!
- 31September 26th, 2008 4:21 pm
i seriously can’t stand the stuff posted on this site.
nobody has any criticisms? everyone just praises everything.
- 32September 26th, 2008 10:24 pm
excelent compilation as usual!
- 33September 27th, 2008 6:19 am
very classical source material, thanks
- 34September 27th, 2008 6:40 am
Nice tutorials!
- 35September 27th, 2008 9:46 am
thanks, now i have some stuff to do and lear to keep me occupied for the next month. peace.
- 36September 27th, 2008 12:16 pm
smashing magazine always have interesting articles and this one doesn’t disappoint. There’s always a need for good photoshop tutorials
- 37September 27th, 2008 9:07 pm
I naturally liked the water dress tutorial the best, hehe.
- 38September 28th, 2008 7:18 am
Thks ! Cool effect :D
- 39September 28th, 2008 10:14 am
The Ocean’s Freshness Photo Effects, the result of doing an extremely shitty job ripping off someone else (http://mosk.deviantart.com/art/Fruit-43854159).
- 40
- 41
- 42September 28th, 2008 12:12 pm
mto bom o blog!
- 43September 29th, 2008 5:40 am
The one with the asian girl in the bonnet, in front of the castle-like building looks horrible. Some of these look horrible too, some are okay.
- 44October 1st, 2008 2:23 am
very nice!!!!!!
- 45October 1st, 2008 9:02 pm
Great! this is very useful!
Thanks!
- 46October 12th, 2008 10:27 am
hellooooooooooo……………………
- 47October 19th, 2008 4:39 am
I’m new @ this and I’m still trying to figure out what to do after the rain is added. I’ve followed all of the steps and have the actual rain image,but what do I enter to make the rain fall?
- 48October 19th, 2008 6:23 am
And how do I get to Image ready and animation? Someone PLEASE assist! :)
- 49December 24th, 2008 1:01 am
Really love this collection,it is really worth for improving our skills, how about smoke and ground edition?? can’t wait to see those topics
- 50December 30th, 2008 4:16 pm
I love this set of toots. However, when I finally got to the water skirt, I got a 404 error. Even the photo is taken down from sxc.com. Disappointed because I really need that one. I did the one above it instead.
- 51
- 52August 7th, 2009 2:10 am
awesome
- 53
- 54September 10th, 2009 5:12 am
Here you can find other water type effect tutorials:
http://designinn-sg.blogspot.com/2009/01/clouds.html
http://designinn-sg.blogspot.com/2008/05/create-realistic-water-droplet.html - 55September 30th, 2009 11:05 am
yaar thanx to the water effect plz give me more effects it’s truly umbilical
it’s lovely - 56October 1st, 2009 4:26 am
I like the collection a lot :) One of my tutorials is actually in this collection: Leaf Drop tutorial. Thanks Smashing!
- 57October 8th, 2009 5:37 am
awesome collection
- 58October 22nd, 2009 2:17 am
Race is one of those topics where it is almost impossible for a person to come to the table with an open mind. ,
- 00
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first :) nice trick….