The Chatterbox

This is a short Photoshop tutorial of one method to create water drops on a glass containing cooler liquid, mimicking a glass sweating. There are several ways to attain this effect.

A friend saw an image I'd done the other day and asked how I accomplished making the bottle look like it was sweating and had water droplets of condensation on the glass. There are several ways to do this in Photoshop, depending upon exactly what you need.

Some are easier to use, some are harder. In this case it was easier because I didn't really need any distortion effect beneath the waterdrops since there weren't any letters on the glass. So I used a method that allows me to add water drops to any image in literally any image in a couple of minutes.

The key to droplets is that when they occur in nature, no matter whether it's condensation or rain, there is a certain randomness involved. Meaning not all of the water drops are the same size. Nor are they positioned in any kind of set pattern. You need both of these elements no matter what method you use.

So with all of this said here's a quick and dirty tutorial, with all the steps and screen shots, of the easiest way I've found to make groups of water drops in Photoshop.
First, we need an image to start with. I've chosen a photo of a glass of iced tea sitting on a deck rail with some green growth in the background. You can right click and save this image if you want to play along.

1. Launch your Photoshop and open the image file you plan to work with. Press the D key to set the Default colors to black foreground and white background.

Next, if your Layers Palette isn't already open press the F7 key to open it.

2. Then select the Create New Layer button. This is a button along the bottom of the Layer Palette, in the position noted in the image to the right.

3. With the new layer created and selected (it selects automatically) press the Ctrl along with the Delete key (Ctrl + Del) to fill the new layer with a white color. Your image should now look similar to the one below.

(Brief Aside: I'm on a Windows PC so the keyboard shortcuts are for Windows users. If you're on a Mac substitute the Command key for the Ctrl key and the Option key when I say to use the Alt key.)

Next we're going to use some filters that are built into Photoshop to create our water drops in a nice random pattern. This is going to look funny for a bit, but stick with the entire three step process and you'll have some great water droplets to work with.

4. First filter - Choose Filter > Render > Fibers. The settings I used are shown to the left and are a pretty good starting point, though you can always tweak the settings on any of these filter instructions to change the look, size and placement of the water drops if necessary.

This should leave your image looking like the one below.

5. Our second filter is Filter > Texture > Stained Glass. The settings I used are shown to the right.

Which leaves our image looking like the one below.

6. Our last filter is Filter > Sketch > Plaster using the settings shown to the left.

Which leave us looking like the image below:

7. Now we need to start maniupulating our water drops. So select the Magic Wand from your Tools menu bar as noted in the image to the right. Then click in one of the Black spots of the image to select everything that's black.

The above should leave you with an image looking like the one below, with all of the Black bits being selected.

We're going to delete this Black part. So press your Delete key. Once the Black is deleted choose Select > Deselect (or Command + D if you like keyboard shortcuts) to deselect our area. This should leave your image looking like the one below.

8. Things are a bit harsh yet, aren't they. So let's make it more realistic. Go to your Layer Palette and tweak the Layer Mode and Opacity a bit. I used a Layer Mode of Overlay and an Opacity of 90% as shown in the image to the left.

Your image should now look something like the one below.

We're getting closer now aren't we? We simply have a little clean up work to do. The clean up Which like it would be a lot harder than it actually is, considering we've got water drops all over the place.

9. With your water droplets layer still selected in the Layer Palette, and it should be already if you haven't clicked around any, choose the Add Layer Mask icon in your Layer Palette, as noted to the right.

To make sure we have our colors set right, press your D key to set the Mask default color options, then press the X key to inverse them. This should leave you with Black as the foreground color and White as the background color.

10. Now select the Lasso from your Tools menu as noted in the image on the left. Using the Lasso tool draw a loose selection around the tea in the glass. Basically what you want to do here is draw a lasso around everything that you want to have water drops, because we'll be using it to mass delete all of the extra water droplets. Don't stress over your Lasso too much though. This is simply a shortcut to save us a little time. Your Lasso doesn't have to be perfect, as you can see from the image of my Lasso drawing below.

Note however that when I drew my Lasso I went just around the tea inside the glass, leaving parts of the glass outside of the Lasso selection. That'll help speed things up a bit in the next step. Not necessary, just nice.

11. With your Lasso drawn we need to invert the selection, so that we're selecting everything outside of our tea. So select Select > Inverse (or Command + I) and then press and hold your Alt key and press the Delete button.

Next deselect everything with Select > Deselect, which should leave you with an image like the one below.

12. Our water drops are all there and somewhat random, however they're just a bit too well-formed to look natural. It's time for final clean up. Select the Brush icon from your menu bar and set it up to be a rather large, soft brush similar to the settings shown in the image to the right. Using this brush "paint" around the edges of your tea and you'll see that this removes unwanted water drops. As shown in the image below.

13. Now set your brush to still be soft, but a bit smaller, similar to the settings shown in the image to the left. Using this brush paint around over the remaining water droplets individually in a somewhat random manner. This will provide the non-uniformity seen in nature. Leave some water drops more well formed, and paint others more so they are less pronounced. At this point I typically reduce the Opacity just a bit too, to around 80%, so that too much doesn't get removed too quickly. This is noted in the image below.

If you overdo it on any of the droplets you can use Ctrl + Z to step back one action. Or Alt + Ctrl + Z if you need to step back multiple steps. Both of those are available in your Edit menu as well.

When you're pretty sure you're done walk away from your computer for 5 minutes or so, or minimize your Photoshop and do something else for a moment. Then look at it again (glancing or scanning really) to see if it looks realistic. When you're done you should have an image with water drops that looks something like the one below.

You can then save it as a .jpg file for use on the web, and you might also want to save it as a .psd Photoshop file, just in case you decide you need to come back and edit it more later. Saving it as a .psd preserves your layers. I tend to save them as both.

I hope the above helps someone out there trying to figure out a quick and easy way to add water drops to an image. The same technique can be used on all types of images to produce both condensation and rain effects. About the only time you'd need to take on one of the more difficult methods, where you create the individual water drops one-at-a-time, is if you have a close-up view that has text or something underneath the water drops that needs to be refracted and distorted.