Easy & Realistic Water Reflection Animation in Photoshop

6 Steps to Gorgeous Animated Water

Some of the most beautiful digital art is animated. And if we want to continue down the line, some of the most beautiful animations include that slowly rippling water effect that you can find rarely - and always remember when you do. The problem is that there aren't any settings or
 filters within Photoshop that create realistic water ripples. You can come close, but the moment it's going to be animated, things start going .... strange.

I'll never be able to explain why I insist on trying out things in Photoshop. I experiment over and over for months on end if necessary until I can end up with precisely the effect I was after. I think it must be the challenge - Adobe Photoshop isn't the easiest thing in the world to learn, but once you get the basics down it's so addictive. There's always some new way to push and stretch your design skills within the program.

So, in this Photoshop tutorial, I'll be sharing how to create some very easy - and beautifully realistic - water reflections and animate them. You don't have to know a lot about Photoshop to use this guide, I'll explain things pretty clearly.

What do you need?

1. A photograph or graphic you want to animate
2. Photoshop 7 or higher (the illustrations use Photoshop CS2)
3. A third-party program called Sqirlz Reflection, which you can download for free here from c|net.

And with that, let's dive right in - this won't take long at all.

Part One: Preparing the Image in Photoshop


Before we can animate the image, we need to have something to actually animate. I suppose there could be something that you'd want to animate the entire image ... but it won't look as nice as what we're going to do. So, open your image in Photoshop.

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Your instructions are great, but I only use an iBook. I want to learn this technique, but Sqiriz only works with Windows. Do you know of a comparable app which works on Mac?

Posted on 05/02/2009 at 5:05:49 PM

The best instructions I have seen! I'm new to Photoshop but have been trying to figure it out for a long time now. This is the first project I have been able to understand and complete. THANK YOU!!!!!

Posted on 10/25/2008 at 8:10:03 AM

TY for that tutorial, i saw a seagull somewhere, animated flying over water with reflections, Wish i could fild some birds with transparent backgroungs.. anyway here's what i made. http://www.flickr.com/photos/3dvue/2462322605/

Posted on 05/03/2008 at 10:05:51 PM

One of the best articles I read and actually practiced by my self. The instructions are very clear and easy to understand. Each and every step is nicely documented for any one to understand how to do it. Thank you very much.

Posted on 01/11/2008 at 2:01:16 PM

Excellent tutorial, and thanks for turning me on to Sqirlz. It's unbelievably easy, and you are too awesome for writing this tutorial!

Posted on 09/24/2007 at 6:09:00 AM

Well, yes... But not without lowering the quality, anyway 300kb isent much, its the CPU usage designers should worry about. You could allways host it somewhere else, forums not allowing this option is just wasteing their own brandwidth.

Posted on 08/15/2007 at 7:08:00 PM

I know how to use it, I'm just wondering is there a way to make the image a smaller kb size? The site I make sigs for max kb size is 70, and the program always makes it like 300+ kb, maybe even more.

Posted on 08/06/2007 at 3:08:00 PM

Cool program, however there are some smaller "bugs" witch are getting fixed in new versions.

Posted on 07/27/2007 at 9:07:00 AM

When i save it as gif.. i cant see the animatio nits just do nothing..

Posted on 05/14/2007 at 9:05:00 AM

Great instructions, so easy, a child could follow it!! Thanks, I wish they were all like this!!

Posted on 05/13/2007 at 9:05:00 AM

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