Fancy creating some cool, glass-like effects on your photographs? Try these stylish Photoshop actions from Envato Elements to bring new life to your images.
In this tutorial, you'll see how to create wet glass, shattered glass, and plexiglass looks with your image using actions. All of these actions are available as part of an Elements subscription.
Look 1: Wet Glass Photoshop Action
Wet Glass is a realistic effect that easily adds a hot-and-humid, rainy day look to your photos in just a few clicks. As an added bonus, you can also write or draw ‘onto’ the glass in the style of a finger drawing. There are three wet glass images to choose from and ten colours.
Before You Get Started
You’ll need to download and install the action.
This is the
image I’ll be using to demonstrate.
Run the Action
This one doesn't require any prep, so you can go ahead and open the image and run the action. The action process will stop and tell you to add one of the images included in the download.
You may need to resize it to fit the dimensions of your image, but it’ll give you the chance to do that.
Make adjustments
There are ten colour adjustments to choose from. Which you select will probably be based on the colours already in your image. I’ve gone for a mix of 09 and 06 at low opacities (around 25%) each, just to even out the colours and make it look a little starker.
Under Blurred you’ll find three options so you can make your background more or less focused depending on how wet you want the image to look. I increased it a little to make the road look smoother.
Write on the Glass
Next, you’ll want to write your message on the window. There’s a layer called Write/Draw here and it’ll come as no surprise to you to hear that this is where you write your message.
If you’re struggling to see it on your image, there’s a layer above called Write Overlay. If you lower the opacity on that slightly, it’ll bring some black through onto your writing.
Finished Result
Look 2: Shatter Glass Photoshop Action
Create a realistic broken glass effect with Shatter Glass Photoshop Action. As well as the action itself, the pack comes with some textured photographs to layer over the top of your image.
Before You Get Started
You’ll need to download and install the action.
This is the image I’ll be using to demonstrate:
Run the Action
Create a layer called brush and brush over your subject using a hard, round brush. Hit play on the ShatterGlass action. Ignore Finalize for now.
The process will stop and ask you to place one of the included texture images.
When you’ve chosen and placed it, the action will continue.
Make Adjustments
You can see that the image has been reflected in the pieces of glass, and some global contrast has been added.
There’s a little too much ‘glow’ on the glass, so to change that, head to the Glass folder and change the Opacity (or hide altogether) on some of the Glow layers and also the L1, L, S… and so on, layers. I’ve highlighted them for you below.
Finalise
Once you have the image the way you want it, you can go back to the Actions tab and run Finalize. This will flatten your image, so make sure you’ve saved it somewhere first!
Doing that will add extra contrast and give you three Curves options to choose from to add further colour and contrast to the image.
Look 3: Plexiglass Abstract Effects
Add abstract and unique effects to your photographs with Plexiglass for Photoshop. There are 15 options to add colours and borders, brightening up dull images.
Before You Start
You’ll need download and install the action.
Run the Action
Hit play all and you’ll find the various options in your History panel rather than Layers.
The effects range from the cutely coloured:
To the bold and more graphic design oriented:
There isn’t much in the way of adjustment here, but each effect does at least have the option to adjust the gradient colour used and also to remove the border.
More Stylish Photoshop Actions
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