Targeted Animated Rain Effect - PSP

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. - Nabkov

Using Paint Shop Pro 7 and Animation Shop 3, how to go from this:

...to this:

1) It all starts in PSP, so open just that right now. You'll start with your screen cap and clean it up and crop it. I'm going to assume you know how to do these things¹, and skip the smaller steps of getting to the base image. This is mine, and I call it step one.

When picking an image for the rain effect, it helps to use a screen cap that already has the look of rain, whether someone under an umbrella, rain against the glass, or someone standing there soaking wet. Otherwise you have driving rain over an image where it looks a little odd. Not many people when drenched, have hair and make up that look perfect.

2) Create a new raster layer and flood fill it using a gray color. How dark or light depends on the base picture you're working with, though darker grays seem to work best for my tastes.

Yes, you can't see the base image. Don't worry just yet.

3) From there go to Effects > Noise > Add. I use from 43-45 percent, depending on how hard it's raining out, and set the seeding at random.

4) Next you'll go to Effects > Blur > Motion Blur. Look at your screen cap. How is the rain falling? Up and down? Slightly to the side? When choosing your angle, you'll first set it to fall in the same direction, and then nudge the angle over just a little. It will make the rain fall look natural, but it will stand out enough from the actual picture, that your eye will pick it up easier. I set the intensity at 10 pixels.

5) Now take that layer and first duplicate it, and then go to Image > Rotate. You want to turn in 180 degrees. It doesn't matter if you go right or left, but you must uncheck all layers, or you'll rotate every single layer and not just the one you're currently working on.

You'll have two rain layers. Make sure they look slightly different now, rather than later.

6) Now comes the tricky part. Set both of the rain layers to screen, then in the layer palate , you'll shut one off by clicking on the little eyeglasses . This allows you to work on one rain layer at a time. Next, turn the opacity down on the rain layer so you can see the base beneath clearly. Then erase any rain where it shouldn't be. Switch off your finished rain layer and switch on the other one. When you're finished, they should look pretty much the same, like this:

and  

Mine aren't perfect, but it still worked. Try to get as close as possible. Now, keep both layers set to screen, but play around with the opacity until you get something that isn't too light, and not too dark.

7) Now, go back to your base. Duplicate it, drag it to the top of all your layers, and set it to soft light. Muck about with the opacity until you are satisfied.

Now, technically, you're done creating what will be the two base images right there. If you don't want a border or text, then skip to step ten. Otherwise...

8) Create a vector layer over top all the layers you currently have. You can put in whatever text you want. I use part of the opening lines from the book, Lolita, by Nabkov. I used the dropper tool to pick a color from the base, and set the layer to lighten and played with the opacity. You don't really want the text to stand out, because it will distract from the animation. The font I used was Decker.

9) Create a new raster layer at the very top of all your layers. This is your border layer. I created a very simple brush that just stamps a 1 pixel border on, but you can use whatever border brush works for your image. Do not add the border using Image > Add border. You'll knock off the 100x100 size. Now, like the text, you don't want the border to distract from, or cover up too much of your animation. I set mine to burn. It gives it a nice effect of blending in and out of the picture. Then I further that by playing with the opacity.

10) On your layer palate, turn off the eyeglasses for one of the rain layers (doesn't matter which). Then go to Edit and Copy Merge. Paste it as a new image to your work space. Go back to the layer palate and turn that layer back on, and shut off the other rain layer. Copy merge and paste that one to your workspace as well. Save both parts as rain1 and rain2. You can save as png here still, which I recommend, as you'll be saving it as a gif later, and you don't want to lose too much quality this early in the process.

Don't erase the original layers because you will go back and forth tweaking and saving over and over. By the time I'm satisfied, I usually have saved something like: rain1, rain2, rain1B, rain2B, rain1HRD, rain2HRD, rain1SFT, rain2SFT, rainraingoaway1, rainraingoaway2, etc. So, don't erase anything until you have your finished product.

Now it's time to animate your icon. Open Animation Shop. We'll be using the animation wizard because it's super fast and super easy. Plus, I'm lazy and just spent a lot of time in PSP.

1) First screen - Check off same size as the first image frame, and go to the next screen.

2) Check off transparent and go to the next screen.

3) Check off centered in the frame and with the canvas color, and go to the next screen.

4) Check off that yes, you want it to repeat indefinitely. On the scale below, choose the lowest number, which is 1. Add in your two images, rain1 and rain2, and finish out of the wizard.

and

5) View your animation. Just a note, but when you run it, the rain will look really fast and choppy. Don't panic! Once it's optimized and saved as a gif, the animation will slow to something more natural. What you're looking for right now is whether the rain is too dark, too light, etc. If you're satisfied, then save your animation. I find I don't have to lower the quality to save at all, because it's such a simple animation, that there's little bloat.

If you're not satisfied, then close out, go back to PSP, and fix your rain layers. This is why I said not to delete anything until you're absolutely finished.

Tada.

Some other icons I made using this method:

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Notes:

¹ If you don't know how to prep your images, may I suggest this tutorial.

This tutorial is possible thanks to the ones written here and here.

Oh, feel free to snag what icons you want from the tutorial, and no need to credit me for them or the use of the tutorial itself. :D