Water+Drops

Learn how you can make very cool and realistic waterdrops with GIMP. > Create a new file: 800x600px. Fill it with any background color you want. I did a soft blue gradient - that looks cool. > > click to enlarge > > click to enlarge > > click to enlarge > > click to enlarge > After this invert all the pixels: Colors / Invert. After that all black should be white. > > click to enlarge > > - Dialogs / Channels. Add a new channel there while still having the selection active. Click "Initialize from selection". > Press CTRL+SHIFT+A to deselect all. > - user Filter / Blur / Gaussian Blur 3 times with these values: 7 then 3 and finally 1. Click the eye symbol to make the channel invisible. > Switch back to the layers dialog and click the layer that contains the white "drops". > > click to enlarge > Filter / Light & Shadow / Lighting effects... > We will now illuminate the drops from 2 sides (from top and from bottom) so we get some pretty real hightlights for the water. We need 2 directional light sources. Use my values (see the picture below). Don't forget to use the channel we created
 * 1) a word before we start: I'm using the dialogue "Color" very often in this tutorial. If you use GIMP 2.2 the options i mean are found under Layer / Colors, since 2.3 this is only the menu "Color".
 * 1) Add a new Layer. Filter / Render / Solid noise. User max values: 16/16.
 * 1) Colors / threshold, look at the pic below to see the values )left: 86, right: 172).
 * 1) You'll get a picture that looks like mine below:
 * 1) Choose Colors / Color to Alpha and choose white to make all white transparent.
 * 1) Duplicate this layer, make it invisible by clicking the eye icon left to the layer in the layers dialog. Right click the layer in the layers dialog: "Selection from Alpha".
 * 1) Make sure the white drops layer is active. Now the heart piece of this tutorials follows: