Welcome to ©Tracy's Graphics Animated Water Tutorial.
This technique is done without the aid of plug-ins or filters and has been achieved just by using the tools available in Paint Shop Pro 5. (This can easily be adapted for newer versions of PSP). This page is very graphics intense, so please be patient whilst it loads.
First of all you need an image to work from. I got this one from Webshots If you wish you can use this for the purpose of the tutorial. Right click on the image and save to your favourite folder.
Open up the image in Paint Shop Pro. Copy and paste as a new image (Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V). Paste another two copies giving you four in total. Close the original picture and we will work with the copies.
Click on your re-touch tool
,
and set the settings on the control panel as shown below.
Zoom in on your image so you can see more clearly what you are working on.
Click and drag the tool across small areas of the watery area of your image. Go left and right being careful not to go onto the "shoreline" or water's edge. Try to keep the lines fairly straight, but random too. You can see how the colours smudge gently together.
Repeat the process on the other two pictures, making random strokes across left and right.
Save all three images in PSP format with a simple name and number format, eg water1, water2, water3.
Go to File>Run Animation Shop. Then onto File>Animation Wizard. When the box open up, click on "same as first image">next, then click on "Transparent">next, then click on "Upper left corner of frame" & "Canvas Colour">next. We want it to play continuously, so click on "yes repeat indefinately", set it to 20, (you can adjust this to suit)>next>add image. Click on the file you want, and open it. Then repeat this for the other two files. Click on next>finish.
A box will appear showing the frames of the animation. Minimise this (we don't need it yet). Go to view>animation. You will then see the animation you have just created. If you are happy with it, shut this down, then save the animation under whatever file name you decide on , and that is that! All done! You should have something that looks like this!
©Tracy's Graphics
©Tracy's Graphics 2000-02. This tutorial was written by and is the property of Tracy's Graphics and may not be re-produced or copied in any way, shape or form (including translation into other languages). The webgraphics on this page were designed by and are the property and copyright of Tracy's Graphics 2000-2002. None of the images on this page are to be taken, linked to or uploaded to another server (with the exception of the photo used for the tut itself.)