The Story of
A Heart-warming Request

Back in October 2003,  a lady contacted me asking for help. She explained her husband was dying of cancer and loved a picture they had on their wall, wishing he could see the water lapping before he goes. She asked if I could do anything to make his wish come true.  How could I refuse such a request?  I asked her to scan in the picture for me and said I'd do what I could.

This was the picture....

Using both Photoshop AND Paint Shop Pro (and of course Reflet), I managed it after much trial and error. The finished result was of course a much larger image (as was the original) which I emailed to her and she was so happy to see the smile on her husband's face when he viewed it on their laptop.

So how did I achieve this?

After I sat down and thought about it, and worked out the pictures needed beforehand, it was really quite easy. With the right tools! A few attempts, and trial and error, I produced the effect I wanted.

Step 1

This was to take the original photo and using PhotoShop 7 and the polygonal lasso tool, I cut out the water, swans and all. I then flipped this image and saved it.

Step 2

I then opened this image in a program called Reflet to produce an animated mirror effect. This is not the normal use of this program, the idea being to produce reflections in water of normal images such as this one...

... but for my purpose, it came in mighty handy!!!

Step 3

I set Reflet to produce 10 frames to give a smoother animation. With the water now rippling with the effect I wanted, I then imported this into Animation Shop 3. This was a Jasc Software program now taken over by Corel, however any good GIF animator package should be able to do the job. Ok, in Animation Shop, I cropped the top half away to leave me with the animated water only.

Step 4

Now came the tricky part. I opened the original photo (from Step 1) in Animation Shop and duplicated it across ten frames. So I have 10 frames of the same still photo in them. Going back to the water animation above, I then "select all", and drag the first frame of the animation into the first frame of the set of 10 still frames. Carefully laying the water over the original photo until you get the right alignment and all ten frames will copy across from the water animation onto the 10 frames of the stills.

Step 5

So far so good. The problem was, that some of the ripples of water were overlaying the jetty, and the swans looks like a TV trying to tune in. Back to PhotoShop to get the top half of the original photo.

I opened this with Animation Shop, duplicated 10 frames, and using the same procedure described above to add the water frames to the original, I layered the 10 frames of the top half of the photo onto the one I have now added the animated water to. This solved the problem of the water overlapping incorrect parts of the picture.

The final step was simply to do the same procedure above with the swans. I used PhotoShop once again to cut out the swans. I opened the swans in Animation Shop, created 10 duplicated frames and layered this over the swans in the original animation. Originally, I cut out the swans from water before flipping the picture and animating it in Reflet, but the "holes" where the swans were went so wobbly, that the swans in the original finished picture were being obscured in some frames.

And that was it.  The original image was 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels and can be seen by clicking HERE (Opens in a new window)

UPDATE

Since writing this article, I came across a program called Sqirlz which makes the whole process far easier!  Sqirlz is FREE to download and use and is far more powerful than Reflet.  It can not only add ripples to the water but also Ring Ripples, Waves,  Rain, Snow and even animate other things such as waterfalls and trees blowing in the wind.  All you have to do is draw around (select) the area (usually water) you want to animate, select the type of animation and after making a few adjustments to get it looking authentic or to your liking, save it.  It really is as simple as that.  If only I had this program in 2003!   Still, it was a challenge and fun to do.

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