Photo Effects: Add Realistic Water Drops To A Photo

Step 4: Apply The "Add Noise" Filter

With our layer now filled with white, we need to add some noise to it. Go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, select Noise, and then select Add Noise, which brings up Photoshop's "Add Noise" dialog box. Drag the Amount slider all the way to the right, and make sure that both the Gaussian and Monochromatic options at the bottom are selected:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box. Your image will now be filled with black noise:

Step 5: Apply The "Gaussian Blur" Filter

Go back up to the Filter menu and this time choose Blur and then Gaussian Blur, which brings up the "Gaussian Blur" filter dialog box. Drag the Radius slider to the right to increase the amount of blurring that's applied to the noise until all you see is larger clumps of dark and light gray. I'm using a low resolution image for this tutorial, and for me, a value of about 6 pixels seems to work nicely. For high resolution images, you'll need to set your Radius value higher to achieve the same effect:

Here's the effect you're trying to achieve:

Click OK to exit out of the Gaussian Blur dialog box.

Step 6: Apply A "Threshold" Image Adjustment

Go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choose Adjustments, and then choose Threshold, which brings up the "Threshold" dialog box. The Threshold adjustment turns everything in the image either black or white, and we're going to use it to create the basic shapes of our water drops. Click on the slider at the bottom of the Threshold dialog box and drag it either left or right to decrease or increase the size and number of black areas in the image. These black areas will become our water drops. Dragging the slider to the right increases the size and number of black areas, and dragging to the left decreases them:

It's completely up to you how many water drops you want in your image. When you're happy with how it looks, click OK to exit out of the dialog box. Here's my image after applying the Threshold adjustment:

Step 7: Apply A Slight Gaussian Blur To Smooth The Edges Of The Black Areas

The only problem with the Threshold adjustment is that it tends to leave us with very harsh, jagged edges, and of course water doesn't have harsh, jagged edges. It has smooth edges, so we need to fix that, and we can fix it easily by simply re-applying the Gaussian Blur filter. Since Gaussian Blur was the last filter we used, we can access it quickly with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F (Win) / Command+Option+F (Mac), which brings up the filter's dialog box without applying it, giving us a chance to change the settings first. We don't want to use the same amount of blurring as we applied initially since that's way too much. All we want to do here is smooth out any rough edges, and for that, we only need a hint of blurring. I'm going to set my Radius value to only 0.8 pixels this time:

Click OK to exit out of the Gaussian Blur dialog box once again.