How To Create a Realistic Water on Glass Effect in Photoshop

If you have a portrait that is a little bland, or you're looking to add a skill to your retouching locker, this may be the technique for you.

We all have bland images in our library that we can't bring ourselves to throw away as it's probably well-lit and in focus, but we can't figure out how to make it work. Though creating better images in-camera is always good advice, once the shoot has happened and the image is on your harddrive, that ship has sailed. So, perhaps it's time to use revolution rather than evolution in the post-processing phase.

In this video, Photoshop educator Unmesh Dinda goes through a way of combining images of rain on windows with a portrait to give a much moodier and more interesting image. Though compositing can appear intimidating at times, it's often far easier than you might expect and with Dinda's walkthrough, you'll be able to pull this off effortless.

Though this was obviously highly effective for portraiture, it can of course extend to other types of images too. For example, a moody cityscape or street shot would benefit from this blending of images perfectly. If you revolutionize any of your images, share them in the comments below.

Robert K Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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4 Comments

think it'd be faster to just call the model back and say "hey, can you stand in front of this window real quick while i grab a spray bottle?

Unmesh is definitely the PS king in my view