{"id":54946,"date":"2024-11-12T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T20:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/?p=54946"},"modified":"2024-11-15T12:14:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T20:14:29","slug":"tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-240","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/2024\/11\/tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-240\/","title":{"rendered":"Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rerun: Raindrops with Photoshop (Elements)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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PDF Version : https:\/\/bit.ly\/3YTcqgI<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve had a lot going on the last couple of weeks, with more yet to come, and I’m mentally exhausted. But rather than making excuses I thought I’d crank up the WayBack Machine<\/strong> and revisit a fun technique from 6 years ago… digital raindrops! (They look a lot like the ones that blasted my windows today.)<\/p>\n

I started with a 12\u00d712 blank, transparent canvas. Then I chose the\u00a0Elliptical Marquee<\/strong>\u00a0tool to make my droplets.<\/p>\n

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Water droplets are spherical when they\u2019re suspended in space and have a domed appearance when they\u2019re on a surface. So I set the\u00a0Tool Options<\/strong>\u00a0to\u00a0Fixed Ratio 1:1<\/strong>\u00a0to give me a perfect circle. I\u00a0clicked-and-dragged<\/strong>\u00a0out my first droplet and filled it with white using the\u00a0Paint Bucket<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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You can\u00a0click-and-drag<\/strong>\u00a0out a random (odd) number of drops of varying sizes using that method, or you can just\u00a0copy<\/strong>\u00a0that first one then\u00a0resize<\/strong>\u00a0them to suit.<\/p>\n

I made\u00a05<\/strong>\u00a0round drops to start with. Then, because the photo I used in my layout looked stormy, I thought I\u2019d add some falling drops too. The\u00a0Custom Shape<\/strong>\u00a0tool has a\u00a0raindrop<\/strong>\u00a0in the default shapes, so it was pretty simple to\u00a0click-and-drag<\/strong>\u00a0out a raindrop using white again.<\/p>\n

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I want to be able to resize and alter the shape a little bit, but there\u2019s a raindrop!<\/p>\n

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To be able to make changes to the image, I\u00a0Simplified<\/strong>\u00a0the layer.<\/p>\n

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Then I could\u00a0change the angle<\/strong>\u00a0on the drop to match the direction the rain would be falling from in the photo. I\u00a0copied<\/strong>\u00a0(CTRL\/CMD>J<\/strong>)the layer a few times and\u00a0resized<\/strong>\u00a0them randomly.<\/p>\n

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After I had a good (odd) number of droplets, I\u00a0Merged<\/strong>\u00a0all 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

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We\u2019ve talked about\u00a0Styles<\/strong>\u00a0before 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\u00a0Styles<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0PSE\u2019s defaults<\/strong>\u00a0is one called\u00a0Wow Plastic<\/strong>. That\u2019s the one I used. The menu looks like this.<\/p>\n

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One click on that\u00a0Wow Plastic Aqua Blue<\/strong>\u00a0turned them all into this.<\/p>\n

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I felt the blue was too blue, so I\u00a0double-clicked<\/strong>\u00a0on the\u00a0fx<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0icon on the layer in the\u00a0Layers panel<\/strong>\u00a0to get into the adjustment menu. I\u00a0changed<\/strong>\u00a0the blue on the shadow layer to one much lighter, and I\u00a0turned off<\/strong>\u00a0the\u00a0Outer Glow<\/strong>\u00a0setting because it made the drops look like they had a wire ring around them. The\u00a0Bevel<\/strong>\u00a0went to the max setting to make them look more spherical.<\/p>\n

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I also made sure the light source was coming from the same direction so there\u2019s no visual conflict.<\/p>\n

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

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As I\u2019ve mentioned before, I have a variety of purchased\u00a0Styles<\/strong>\u00a0in my stash \u2013 including a water set, but I wanted to make sure everybody could accomplish the look without having to buy anything else.<\/p>\n

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But OH they\u2019re blue!! So I dropped the\u00a0Opacity<\/strong>\u00a0to\u00a075%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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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\u00a0Opacity<\/strong>\u00a0again to\u00a075%<\/strong>\u00a0and liked it better.<\/p>\n

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But alas, they\u2019re not very WET. I didn\u2019t want to mess up what I\u2019d already done, so I\u00a0Duplicated<\/strong>\u00a0(CTRL\/CMD>J<\/strong>)the layer to give me a throw-away if what I wanted to try didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

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Because the two layers are only\u00a075% Opacity<\/strong>, I can see the underlying layer through the top one. That\u2019s helpful; I went into\u00a0Enhance>Adjust Color>Adjust Hue\/Saturation\u00a0<\/strong>(CTRL\/CMD>U<\/strong>) and played with that.<\/p>\n

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I took the\u00a0Saturation<\/strong>\u00a0down to\u00a00<\/strong>\u00a0and increased the\u00a0Lightness<\/strong>\u00a0to\u00a0+20<\/strong>. Now it\u2019s got a stormy gray look to the top layer.<\/p>\n

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Now it\u2019s looking more like a water droplet on the leaf, but not so much on the photo. Hmm.<\/p>\n

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There has to be a way\u2026<\/p>\n

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Back I went to the\u00a0Styles>Wow Plastic<\/strong>\u00a0menu and this time I chose the\u00a0Clear<\/strong>\u00a0style. I\u2019m still on that copy layer on top of my original droplet layer.<\/p>\n

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A few tweaks of the Style in the\u00a0fx<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0menu and NOW I\u2019m happy!! For this adjustment I\u00a0turned off<\/strong>\u00a0the\u00a0INNER Glow<\/strong>. You could follow all of these steps on your blank canvas before moving it to your layout now that I\u2019ve done all the experimentation for you.\u00a0😉<\/p>\n

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You can see\u00a0my entire layout<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Gallery<\/strong><\/a>. For the layout I used\u00a0Ooh La La Scraps<\/strong><\/a>\u2018\u00a0Falling Slowly<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0collection (sans Styles<\/strong>) and a photo I found on Pixaba<\/strong>y.<\/p>\n

Next week is Challenge Spotlight<\/strong> Tuesday. Maybe I’ll have time to actually participate in a Challenge<\/strong> before then. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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

Rerun: Raindrops with Photoshop (Elements) PDF Version : https:\/\/bit.ly\/3YTcqgI I’ve had a lot going on the last couple of weeks, with more yet to come, and I’m mentally exhausted. But rather than making excuses I thought I’d crank up the WayBack Machine and revisit a fun technique from 6 years ago… digital raindrops! (They look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[229,102,284,92,62],"tags":[373],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 23:54:38","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\/54946"}],"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=54946"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54999,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54946\/revisions\/54999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}