Water the Easy Way

1. To begin, have an image open. I've borrowed a piece of stock photography from the Goodies folder in the Photoshop directory.

2. Duplicate the image in a new layer.

3. In the toolbar, click on the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Up in the Options Bar, enter a feather radius of 5 px.

4. Make an oval selection on your image.

5. Create a new layer.

6. Change your foreground color to white. Click on the Airbrush Tool and, using a feathered circular brush, spray a hew horizontal lines within the selection.

7. Select another foreground color.. I'm using a gray-blue to fit with my background. Spray a few spots of color into the selection, but be careful not to overpower the white. We need the white to be predominant.

8. Go to Filter>Distort>Twirl. Give it a twist of around 250-300.

9. Merge the paint layer into the duplicate background layer beneath it (Command/CTRL+E).

10. Go to Filter>Distort>Zigzag. Change the Style to 'Pond Ripples', set the Amount to 35% and number of ridges to 5.

11. Go to Select>Inverse.

12. Again, go to Filter>Distort>Zigzag. This time select 'Out From Center' for the style, Amount=100%, Ridges=7.

13. You may want to apply a Gaussian Blur of 2 or so on the selection.

There you have it. Take care, and see you at Action Fx!