{"id":21757,"date":"2017-10-31T14:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T21:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/?p=21757"},"modified":"2017-10-31T12:06:36","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T19:06:36","slug":"tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/2017\/10\/tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-51\/","title":{"rendered":"Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Actually, here in north-central Alberta it’s snowing on my head today….<\/p>\n

Last week’s tutorial elicited quite a few comments. Pam<\/strong> mentioned in hers that she liked the sandy look but wanted to know how to make digital raindrops and Lynden Blossom<\/strong> wanted to know what I planned to do with my sandy leaf. So your faithful scribe set out to meet those directives. (Sorry, Jill<\/strong>. There is no tutorial arising from my Color Challenge layout<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I started with a 12×12 blank, transparent canvas. Then I chose the Elliptical Marquee<\/strong> tool to make my droplets.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Water droplets are spherical when they’re suspended in space and have a domed appearance when they’re on a surface. So I set the Tool Options<\/strong> to Fixed Ratio 1:1<\/strong> to give me a perfect circle. I clicked-and-dragged<\/strong> out my first droplet and filled it with white using the Paint Bucket<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You can click-and-drag<\/strong> out a random (odd) number of drops of varying sizes using that method, or you can just copy<\/strong> that first one then resize<\/strong> them to suit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I made 5<\/strong> round drops to start with. Then, because the photo I used in my layout looked stormy, I thought I’d add some falling drops too. The Custom Shape<\/strong> tool has a raindrop<\/strong> in the default shapes, so it was pretty simple to click-and-drag<\/strong> out a raindrop using white again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I want to be able to resize and alter the shape a little bit, but there’s a raindrop!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To be able to make changes to the image, I Simplified<\/strong> the layer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then I could change the angle<\/strong> on the drop to match the direction the rain would be falling from in the photo. I copied<\/strong>\u00a0(CTRL\/CMD>J<\/strong>)the layer a few times and resized<\/strong> them randomly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After I had a good (odd) number of droplets, I Merged<\/strong> all the layers together. (CTRL\/CMD>E<\/strong>)\u00a0<\/strong>That way I could apply my next few steps to all of them in one click.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We’ve talked about Styles<\/strong> before in several other tutorials. What they are is a group of adjustments that make the layer take on a different look. Way down at the bottom of the list of Styles<\/strong> in PSE’s defaults<\/strong> is one called Wow Plastic<\/strong>. That’s the one I used. The menu looks like this.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One click on that Wow Plastic Aqua Blue<\/strong> turned them all into this.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I felt the blue was too blue, so I double-clicked<\/strong> on the\u00a0fx<\/strong><\/em> icon on the layer in the Layers panel<\/strong> to get into the adjustment menu. I changed<\/strong> the blue on the shadow layer to one much lighter, and I turned off<\/strong> the Outer Glow<\/strong> setting because it made the drops look like they had a wire ring around them. The Bevel<\/strong> went to the max setting to make them look more spherical.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I also made sure the light source was coming from the same direction so there’s no visual conflict.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Below are my final adjustment settings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a variety of purchased Styles<\/strong> in my stash – including a water set, but I wanted to make sure everybody could accomplish the look without having to buy anything else.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But OH they’re blue!! So I dropped the Opacity<\/strong> to 75%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then it was time to see how they all looked on my layout. So I dropped them onto it and moved it into place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They still looked too blue and obvious so I dropped the Opacity<\/strong> again to 75%<\/strong> and liked it better.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But alas, they’re not very WET. I didn’t want to mess up what I’d already done, so I Duplicated<\/strong> (CTRL\/CMD>J<\/strong>)the layer to give me a throw-away if what I wanted to try didn’t work.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Because the two layers are only 75% Opacity<\/strong>, I can see the underlying layer through the top one. That’s helpful; I went into Enhance>Adjust Color>Adjust Hue\/Saturation\u00a0<\/strong>(CTRL\/CMD>U<\/strong>) and played with that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I took the Saturation<\/strong> down to 0<\/strong> and increased the Lightness<\/strong> to +20<\/strong>. Now it’s got a stormy gray look to the top layer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now it’s looking more like a water droplet on the leaf, but not so much on the photo. Hmm.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There has to be a way…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Back I went to the Styles>Wow Plastic<\/strong> menu and this time I chose the Clear<\/strong> style. I’m still on that copy layer on top of my original droplet layer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A few tweaks of the Style in the\u00a0fx<\/strong><\/em> menu and NOW I’m happy!! For this adjustment I turned off<\/strong> the INNER Glow<\/strong>. You could follow all of these steps on your blank canvas before moving it to your layout now that I’ve done all the experimentation for you. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You can see my entire layout<\/strong><\/a> in the Gallery<\/strong><\/a>. For the layout I used Ooh La La Scraps<\/strong><\/a>‘ Falling Slowly<\/strong><\/a> collection (sans Styles) and a photo I found on Pixabay. (If you’re not familiar with Pixabay, you need to check it out!)<\/p>\n

Happy Hallowe’en!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head Actually, here in north-central Alberta it’s snowing on my head today…. Last week’s tutorial elicited quite a few comments. Pam mentioned in hers that she liked the sandy look but wanted to know how to make digital raindrops and Lynden Blossom wanted to know what I planned to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[92,62],"tags":[373],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 21:08:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"private","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21757"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21786,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21757\/revisions\/21786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}