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This tutorial will teach you how to add realistic rain to your scenes.
step 1
Rain, rain, rain. Water Falling from the sky, God is a genius.
Ok, rain basically falls in a more or less even fashion, so it should have depth not just one layer. More rain in the distance, less but more defined rain near the camera.
step 2
For this tutorial I might as well show you how to get the mood/ conditions in which rain falls……..its not just darkning the image……………………………………………………………………………Firstly get yourself an image you want to comp the rain into.
step 3
Use the brightness and contrast adjustment to quickly darken the image. Carefully do this as you can easily overdo it and have a black picture with no details.
step 4
Next you need to desaturate your image since nothing is vibrant when rain is falling………………………..I used hue/saturation but many other adjments like curves & levels give you control over saturation.
step 5
Time to make the actual rain………first create a new layer and fill it with 50% grey.
step 6
Then add a very strong noise to it…………………………. As it stands the layer simply has black & white noise to it, we need to introduce some grey. To do this use gaussian blur and enter a small figure like 0.5.
step 7
noise layer after gaussian blur
step 8
The noise is too thick so it needs to be crushed down a bit. Use levels to bring the black values down until u have something that looks like stars.
step 9
Now we onto something, a freeze-frame of rain………………………………………add the impression of movement to it by using the motion blur filter. Tweak the angle & the distance values until u get the direction your rain is falling.
step 10
The motion blur gives a good looks but it dulls down the the image. Revive the rain by using Levels again until you get the desired look.
step 11
Thats one layer of rain done call that the background rain, all that leaves is to set its blending mode to ‘Screen’
step 12
If you like what comes out then you can move on but I think its a bit over-the-top. Fix this using Levels again moving the sliders will give you less or more rain.
step 13
This my bgRain, I’ve reduced the opacity of the layer and erased the layer in areas I classify mid-ground or foreground
step 14
Now use the steps to create another rain layer with less rain, this will be the mid-ground…………………………………………………………………….. Dont erase nothing on this layer as it should cover the whole image. Gaussian blur it little and Screen it on top.
step 15
Make another rain layer but this time make the rain minimal, this is your foreground and is very visible in the final image…………………………………………Screen that over as well.
step 16
These are all my rain layers altogether, (against black for visibility).
step 17
Screen the rain layers over your source image and your’re done. Use any adjustments, add water puddles or whatever to enhance your composition………………………………..the xman (Photoshop superhero) signing out…………….Thanks for reading……….