Processing your water droplet photos

Team Photoena
Team Photoena October 21, 2022
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Once you have achieved a good capture of your water droplet crash and crown, it’s time to process the file. Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw are my go-to manipulation programs, along with a plugin or two.

Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)

First stop is Adobe Camera Raw. ACR allows me to do a lot of initial work on color, density and tones on the file. Additionally, using the Masking panel, specific areas can be targeted for additional tweaking.

Straight out of camera. the image is a little underexposed. But after some processing in Adobe Camera Raw, it’s shining just as I intended.

Adobe Photoshop

Once the image is open in Photoshop, it’s time to clean up large and small distractions. This includes using Content Aware Fill to correct the bottom right corner where the bowl edge was showing. The Spot Healing tool was used to remove stray spots all around the image. The Patch Tool was used for smoothing out larger areas needing attention.

Here a look at a screen grab of the Layers Palette showing noise reduction, stray drop clean-up, texture and adjustment layers. Adjustment layers can be turned off and on for different looks for your image.

I used the Clone Stamp at a low opacity to tone down the specular highlights. Care needs to be taken to be taken to be gentle to not remove the brights or take them down too far as it can take away the sparkle from the water drops.

A totally different look after using a Hue Saturation layer for this water droplet.
Black and white Adjustment Layer shows depth in water droplet photography.

Plugins

I used two different noise reduction plug ins to add some smoothing to the scene. Nik Collection’s Define 2 gave a decent result but there were some spots that needed more attention. I invoked Topaz DeNoise AI, which took care of the rest of the noise.

Adding a texture with a blend mode and mask gives more options for different looks.

Extra playtime!

Massage your image further using different Photoshop techniques. A Hue Saturation adjustment layer can open a world of color changes. Dial in colors to fit a clients decor. Add some texture with Blend Modes for a bit more interest.

The initial water droplet photo is only the beginning. If you get the chance after making your water drops, please share them with me in the comments.

See more articles about water droplet photography. Look here for my earlier water droplet earlier series. An article with video by Nicole Young on prepping your liquid.

Yours in Creative Photography, Bob


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