This is a really easy way to render calm water with Photoshop. The water tutorial in Pirate Scene - Part 2 was pretty involved. And time consuming.

There is a quicker way. A way to create water using a few Photoshop filters.

Once again I’ll begin with a gradient.

Then upon that gradient I draw rows of oval shapes. They don’t have to be perfect ovals. The flatter you make them, the calmer the water will look. And the less evenly spaced and sized you make them, the more random the water’s surface.

Apply the motion blur filter and adjust the settings to get something that looks like this.

And then apply a gaussian blur filter. Once again play with the settings to get something that looks like waves.

There you go. That was pretty easy.

Keep in mind that water is reflective and will generally take on the color of what’s above it. Especially if the water has a calm surface. If the sky were pink the water would reflect that. If there were clouds in the sky the water might show them. Bringing a bit of the sky into the water will make it more realistic because it looks like everything is existing in the same environment.

Let me show you what I mean. Here the waves are under a cloudy sky. It looks okay, but the sky and the water don’t seem to be part of the same scene.

If I take a copy of the sky and place it into a layer below the water. And then reduce the opacity of the water layer - the sky and the water become part of the same scene.

That looked pretty good. The water and sky are in the same place. But the water looks a little too reflective. Maybe if it were calmer or made of mercury the water be that reflective.

I’ll take the layer with the reflected clouds in it and blur it a bit.

Much better.

Hopefully this tutorial was helpful and I’ve given you a starting point for creating your own water filled environments.

If I were to finish this scene I might add some sharp hilites to the crests of the waves, and then added some flotsam. Maybe some jepson. How about a dolphin playing volleyball with *Wilson?

Did you find this tutorial helpful? Comments, questions, and suggestions are appreciated.

* Wilson was the ball in “Cast Away”.