Photoshop Tips
Create an Underwater Scene in Photoshop
By Bert Monroy
Excerpted from Commercial Photoshop with Bert Monroy (New Riders)
Dateline: March 25, 2005
Version: Photoshop CS
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This tutorial will be based on some of the work I have been
doing for the past few years—my monthly appearances on
TechTV’s The Screen Savers show. I get a mere 6 minutes to teach
a trick or two. I get to write up a brief tutorial on the TechTV web
site, but I don’t get to attach figures to the tutorials. Here I'll highlight one of the most
popular segments, based on the number of emails that I received after this show, and clearly outline the steps.
The Underwater Scene
This first exercise creates an underwater scene.
Start with a photograph with rocks and gravel in the foreground
to serve as the ocean bottom. The first illustration is a sample of the type of
image I mean. The gravel in the foreground of the image is what
we need.
This image will serve
as the basis for
the
ocean bottom in the
underwater scene.
Using the Hue/Saturation control (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation), push the Hue slider all the way to the left. Push
the Saturation slider slightly to the right (shown below). Moving the Hue
slider shifts the position of colors. The top gradient bar at the bottom
of the dialog box represents the original colors in the image.
The bottom gradient bar shows where the colors are being shifted
to. Notice that the warm, red tones are now becoming cool, blue
tones. The shift to the plus side of the Saturation slider increases the
intensity of the colors.
The hue/saturation
for the image is
adjusted to
simulate
the colors found
under water.
Create a new layer. Choose a dark blue for the foreground color
and a bright blue for the background color. With the Gradient Tool,
make a gradient with the light blue at top and the dark blue at the
bottom as seen below.
A gradient is applied to the layer.
To obtain a water-like texture, apply the Glass filter (Filter > Distort > Glass) to the layer with the gradient. Push the Distortion and Scaling all the way up. Click OK.
The settings for the Glass filter.
Zoom out so that you can see the gray work area around the
image. Choose Edit > Transform > Distort to get the Distort function.
When Distort comes on, you will see handles at the four
corners and one handle centered on each side of the image.
Grab the center handle at the bottom and raise it up to about
the halfway point in the image.
Grab the upper-left handle and drag it out to the left of the
image a couple of inches. Grab the handle at the upper right
and drag it out to the right as seen below. Press Enter to
execute the distortion.
The gray work area is exposed.
Create a layer in between the background and the layer with the
gradient. Set the Gradient Tool to Foreground to Transparent. This
is done in the options bar for the tool on the upper-left icon with
the colored gradient visible, as shown below.
The Foreground to
Transparent mode
is chosen.
In the new layer, create a gradient that connects the bottom of the
layer with the top of the water and flows down into the scene. Note the neat effect where the new gradient intersects the rocks at bottom before fading out.
The abyss is created.
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