Drops of water with gimp - how it works

Gimp has numerous great effects on board. In this guide, we explain how to create realistic water drops.

Create water drops with gimp

You don't have to be a professional to create great water drops with Gimp photo editor. We will show you how this works and explain the individual steps in the picture gallery.

1. Create a new picture in Gimp. In our example, we used the Gradient Tool to create a light blue gradient, but you can use a background of your choice.
2. Add a new layer and go to "Filters -> Edges -> Clouds -> Plastic Noise" in the menu. Set the x and y values ​​to a maximum of 16 and confirm the entry.
3. The next step is to set the threshold. To do this, call up the "Colors -> Threshold" menu and enter the value 86 in the dialog box on the left and 172 on the right.
4. You can get the blue background again if you select the "White to transparent" option in the "Colors -> Colors to transparent" menu. The drops then turn white using the "Colors -> Invert" menu.
5. Now it gets a little bit more complicated: duplicate the layer you were working on and make it invisible. To do this, press the eye symbol in front of the copied layer. Then click with the right mouse button on the layer and in the context menu on "Selection from alpha channel". In the layer window, select the tab for channels and create a new channel.
6. Deactivate the selection for this channel and apply the Gaussian blur three times in succession via "Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian blur". The first time with 7 px, the second time with 3 px and finally with 1 px. Then make the channel invisible by clicking on the eye symbol.
7. Switch from the channels back to the layers and activate the visible layer with the white spots by clicking on it.
8. To make the stains look like water drops, you need the right lighting. Therefore, navigate in the menu "Filters -> Light and shadow -> Light effects". You need two directional light sources. Make the settings in this dialog box according to the screenshots in the image gallery. Make sure that you select the previously created channel as the bumpmap image for the second light source.
9. Next, lock the layer's alpha channel by clicking the icon in the Layers tab and apply Gaussian blur again, this time with the 4 px setting.
10. Remove the gray tone on the stains with "Colors -> Colors for transparency". Use the pipette to select the shade of gray and confirm the filter.

Subtleties for the water drops

The result looks a bit like water drops, but a few subtleties are still missing.

1. The shadows are still missing for a plastic appearance. Therefore, right-click on the invisible duplicate layer. In the context menu, select "Selection from alpha channel".
2. Then navigate to "Filters -> Light and Shadow -> Drop Shadow". Set Offset X 2, Offset Y 3 and Transparency 30 as values. You should now see beautiful drops of water.

In another practical tip, we have put together the 5 best beginner tips for Gimp.