Photoshop Tutorials: Adding Rain To A Photo

Step 11: Crop Away The Extra Canvas Space

Now that we've applied our Motion Blur filter, we can crop away the extra canvas space we added earlier. To do that, right-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac) directly on the thumbnail for "Layer 1" in the Layers palette:

Layer 1 is the copy of our Background layer and it contains our original image before we added the extra canvas space. When you right-click (Win) or Control-click (Mac) on its thumbnail, you'll see a selection appear inside the document which is the exact size of our original image:

All we need to now is go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen and select Crop. Photoshop will crop the image around the selection, removing the extra canvas space and bringing our image back to the size it was when we started.

Once you've cropped the image, press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac) to remove the selection from the screen.

Step 12: Change The Blend Mode Of The Noise Layer To "Screen"

We're almost done. The only problem remaining is that the noise layer is still blocking our original image from view. To blend it in with the image and give us our rain effect, all we need to do is change the noise layer's blend mode. Select the noise layer ("Layer 2") in the Layers palette. Then go up to the top left corner of the Layers palette, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the word "Normal", which is the default blend mode, and select Screen from the list:

As soon as you change the blend mode, the original photo becomes visible in the document and our motion-blurred noise becomes the rain!

If you want to fine-tune the rain effect, simply double-click once again on the Levels adjustment layer's thumbnail in the Layers palette to bring back the Levels dialog box and re-adjust the black and white sliders until you're happy with the rain effect. Click OK when you're done to exit out of it.

Here, once again, is my original image for comparison:

And here is my final rain effect:

And that's how to add rain to a photo in Photoshop and avoid damaging your camera!

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