There have been several times where I wanted to animate water but I keep running into the same roadblock. For example, if I wanted to animate a drop of water running down the monitor (in front of the photoshopped image) and need a way to "automate" a shperized effect of the background image. You know how water distorts/spherizes the image that is behind it? I also had a similar idea of animating ripples on a still image of a pond or lake. Is there a way to somehow "automate" the spherize tool in photoshop? Or to make a layer of a water drop that would automatically spherize (or warp) the layer behind it?

I could do these ideas right now but I would have to make several different layers of the background image and manually spherize each layer in succession.

I hope I am explaining this need in a coherent way.

Not sure what animation is like in PS only way i can think is spherize the whole background after duplicate and move the layer mask around with the water droplet (as the whole BG is spherized behind the mask). My PS skills are not that good bet you can tell well good luck with this.

Record an action?

Just a quick thought without any testing:
Move the drop to where you want, do a select of the drop's area but on the layer beneath, create new layer via copy, spherize new layer, move droplet layer and repeat.

I might have found an answer to my own question. Has anyone ever played with "batch processing and recording" by using the "actions" feature in PS? Here's what I'm talking about: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/digitalphotography/l/blps_batch.htm

Ha! What are the odds of that, TofuTheGreat? We posted the same thing at the same time! Are you familiar with this feature? So far, it sounds like the best option.

I've recorded a couple actions to batch images. Simple stuff like performing the same resize on 1,000+ images. That was in CS3.

I think an action would work to create the spherized layers. And then you'd just have to go through the animation frames to hide/show them as needed.

OK, so I have figured out how to create and use actions in photoshop but I keep coming back to the same roadblock. I can automate the warping of the back ground image but it puts me back to having to make several different versions of the background layer in order to complete the animation.

My question: Is it possible to create a layer that is in front of the background that can "spherize" or "warp" a selected area of the background layer while not affecting the background layer permanently? In other words, can I make a layer that can interact with a background layer like a magnifying glass, enlarging just the area of the background that is inside the shape of the top layer?

Does your action do the "select" step that I suggested? Did it not work?

You can CTRL-Click/CMD-Click a layer's thumbnail to select just the visible area of that layer. Then click on the background layer, choose "create new layer from copy" and then spherize the new layer. I would think this keeps the background layer intact and only creates a layer for the area you want to mess with?

It seems like you could use the save selection command along with the save action set command together.
Only use/select the saved selection or "water drop" when you want to move or separate it from the rest of the action set... maybe as a smart object & smart layer.
swinging blindfolded here.

TofuTheGreat - Yes, I was able to automate the selection process but the problem I run into is that, when I play the action, it spherizes the background image multiple times. I'm trying to find a way around having to make multiple copies of the background layer. If I could somehow make the top layer warp/spherize the background layer without actually affecting the background layer, then I could just animate "snapshots" of that.

Since this is the first time I've tried to use this function of photoshop, I'm sure that I'm missing something in the process.

Laredo - I think you're onto something with the smart object/smart layer idea. Unfortunately, I know very little about those functions of photoshop. I'll spend some time trying to figure it out.

Maybe using smart object AND actions together is the answer?

Oh, wait! TofuTheGreat, I just re-read your last comment and I get where you're going with that. So far, it sounds like the best possible way to get the results that I'm looking for. I'll try it out...

Here's a sample that I found of what I'm trying to achieve (except I would like the water drops to show more distortion)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhdlmUYmEIY

We had some similar discussion way back when. See if it will help.



http://photoshopcontest.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=13725&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Here's what I've got so far. I just grabbed a random background image and created a set of actions to spherize the water drop layers twice, adjust hue/saturation, apply bevel/emboss and apply satin. I get the idea of using actions when creating an animation....life just got a little easier! The water drops need a lot of work to make them look realistic but I will be sure to save the process as an action so that I will not have to reinvent the wheel with unnecessary repetition of steps. I've found that some websites allow you to download pre-made action sets. As soon as I get this water droplet thing figured out, I will post a link to download the action set I end up with. Thanks for all of your helpful advise! If there are any more suggestions, keep 'em coming

Wow! That is AWESOME! It's just the kind of tutorial that I was looking for. Everyone has given me really great suggestions and advise. Thanks