The Rain Thread

[Mike Buckley]

Nice set, Bobo! I especially like the first, second and third one. Seriously, every one of them inspires me to make a point of shooting in the rain.

[stevewe88]

I love shooting in the rain too, it puts a different slant on everything and presents some great opportunities. Out of interest, here are some of my favourites.









And the last one is a fake :-)

[Mike Buckley]

Steve,

The image of the grain with the double rainbow is just stunning. The composition is magnificent!

Though I usually don't like selective color, that last one is a terrific use of it. Such a fun picture! How in the world did you get all of the women to splash with one foot and raise the other foot all at the same time? Great job!

[stevewe88]

Steve,

The image of the grain with the double rainbow is just stunning. The composition is magnificent!

Though I usually don't like selective color, that last one is a terrific use of it. Such a fun picture! How in the world did you get all of the women to splash with one foot and raise the other foot all at the same time? Great job!

Thanks Mike

The selective colour one is a total fake I am afraid (don't you just love photoshop). Here is the SOOC version for interest. It was for a charity calendar for the "April" image so I went a bit crazy with it.

[Mike Buckley]

You certainly faked me out! Great job!

[Sahil]

BOY!
Thats one helluva neat fake job, Steve. The fake one is superb...

Thanks Mike

The selective colour one is a total fake I am afraid (don't you just love photoshop). Here is the SOOC version for interest. It was for a charity calendar for the "April" image so I went a bit crazy with it.

[stevewe88]

BOY!
Thats one helluva neat fake job, Steve. The fake one is superb...

Perhaps I shouldn't have admitted to the fake Thanks Sahil.

[Mike Buckley]

Perhaps I shouldn't have admitted to the fake

Perhaps you should provide a tutorial to absolve you of your sins.

[FrankMi]

And the last one is a fake :-)

To me this is a fun shot! I love what you have done with it!

[stevewe88]

Perhaps you should provide a tutorial to absolve you of your sins.

Hmmm, might take a while to remember how I did it. I will see what I can do.

[stevewe88]

Perhaps you should provide a tutorial to absolve you of your sins.

Not exactly a tutorial but it went something like this-

Convert colour image to B&W with SEP2
Select the umbrellas and mask out the B&W layer to reveal the colour underneath.
Duplicate the layer, flip it upside down and drag it to the bottom of the frame to create the refelction effect. Adjust opacity to give the best effect.
Create some spare canvas around the image by setting background to white and using the crop tool but dragging it out bigger than the image in all directions (no set amount, its just to avoid a problem that happens on one of the later steps)
Create a new blank layer, fill it black.
Go to filter, noise, add noise. Add a lot at least 150%, make sure monochromatic and uniform boxes are checked.
Add a levels adjustment layer and click on the clipping mask button so it only affects the noise layer. Drag the black slider quite a lot towards the middle of the histogram, drag the white slider towards the centre until the amount of noise is reduced and looks more like a starry sky.
Click back onto the noise layer and go to filter, blur, motion blur. Change the angle and pixel distance to get the look you want.
You may notice now that the edges of the convas go a bit funky when you add the motion blur (this is why i added the extra bit of canvas a few steps ago). Control + Click on the original background image so it selects that area within the current layer and crop the spare canvas out that was created earlier.
Change the blend mode of the noise layer to screen and the rain should now appear on the background image. If necessary, go back to the levels adjustment and tweak it to get the best effect.
Then I downloaded some water splash brushes for free and used those to create the raindrop splashes on the ground and the larger splashes at their feet. Dead simple just set the colour to white, get the right shape of splash brush and click it once where you want it. I probably tweaked the opacity of the brush until I got it right.

Go on, give it a try

[Bobobird]

Thanks Steve and Mike. As I said earlier, rain shooting can be pretty good fun though one could get all wet and all.

The other Steve - that 2x rainbow shot is awesome. A friend once took a shot of me with 2 coming out of my head but that is another story.

Now to step backwards and read that wonderful tut.

[Bobobird]

Right!! I understand most of it. How does one flip a layer without flipping the other layers.

Got it - Edit/Transform/Flip.... Not Image/Image Rotation/Flip...

[Mike Buckley]

I hereby declare that you are absolved of your sin.

All of that makes sense. You did a great job of explaining it. I've got an image in which the rain shows up only where there is a very dark background. I might try adding rain to the entire image using your process.

[stevewe88]

Right!! I understand most of it. How does one flip a layer without flipping the other layers.

Got it - Edit/Transform/Flip.... Not Image/Image Rotation/Flip...

Thats it. Remembering to duplicate it first of course.

[stevewe88]

I hereby declare that you are absolved of your sin.

All of that makes sense. You did a great job of explaining it. I've got an image in which the rain shows up only where there is a very dark background. I might try adding rain to the entire image using your process.

Be careful with the absolution until you have tried it

[stevewe88]

The other Steve - that 2x rainbow shot is awesome. A friend once took a shot of me with 2 coming out of my head but that is another story.

Cheers. It was taken with a 8mm fisheye lens. One of the best purchases I've made

[Bobobird]

Thats it. Remembering to duplicate it first of course.

[arith]

Some great shots there Steve; I like the ladies and the tranquility of the church. The rainbow is fantastic.

[stevewe88]

Some great shots there Steve; I like the ladies and the tranquility of the church. The rainbow is fantastic.

Thanks Steve