Photo Effects: Add Realistic Water Drops To A Photo

Step 16: Apply The "Displace" Filter To The Duplicate Background Layer ("Layer 1")

Switch back to your Layers palette now and click on the duplicate Background layer ("Layer 1") to select it. We're going to apply the "Displace" filter to this layer, using the displacement map we just created and saved to the Desktop, which is going to give us our water distortion effect. Go up to the Filter menu, choose Distort, and then choose Displace, which brings up the "Displace" filter dialog box. Lower both the Horizontal Scale and Vertical Scale options down to about 8, then make sure Displacement Map is set to Stretch To Fit and Undefined Areas is set to Repeat Edge Pixels:

Click OK to exit out of this dialog box, and a second dialog box will appear asking you to select the displacement map you want to use. Choose the file you just saved to your desktop, then click Open, and Photoshop will apply the displacement map to the layer.

Step 17: Delete The Areas On The Layer Which Are Not Under The Water Drops

The only problem is, some of the distortion has been applied to the areas around the outside of the water drops, and we only want the distortion to appear in areas that are directly under the water drops, so we need to trim away the areas we don't want, and we can do that by simply deleting the areas we don't want, just like we did back at the beginning when we deleted all the white areas around the black shapes. With "Layer 1" still selected, hold down your Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and click once again on the water drops layer's thumbnail to place a selection around all the water drops:

Notice that even though we're clicking on the water drops layer's thumbnail, we still have "Layer 1" selected in the Layers palette, not the water drops layer.

The water drops are now selected:

Then, with the water drops selected, press Ctrl+Shift+I (Win) / Command+Shift+I (Mac) to invert the selection, so all the areas around the water drops become selected and the water drops themselves are deselected.

Finally, press the Delete key on your keyboard to delete all the unwanted areas on "Layer 1", leaving only the areas under the water drops, creating our water distortion effect, as well as our final result:

And we're done!

Want an easier way to follow along with our tutorials? Download them as printable PDFs!