Rippling water effect?

[tambra_turano]

Hello,

How can I create a rippling/waving water effect? (GIF I'm assuming) I did find a great little program called Sqirlzreflect, but it's not exactly what I'm looking for, since it creates a false reflection. I just want to have the water wave, not reflect the sky above it.

I have Photoshop Elements, but not Photoshop. There are many seascape photos on my page if anyone would like to use one as an example.

Thank you,

Tambra Turano

[photojaq]

In PaintShop Pro there are a number of ripple effects available:
with Effects | Distortions | Wave, Effects | Distortions | Twirl, and Effects | Distortions | Ripple being the best.

In Photoshop, the commands are Filter | Distort | Ripple or Wave or Ocean Ripple.

By he way If ind these command work well overlapped or selctively masked out using a big 40-60pixel feather. Watch out though - this stuff is so much fun it really can eat up creative time

[tambra_turano]

Hello Photojag,

Thanks so much for responding. I did find those commands in Photoshop Elements, however, I should have been more specific - I was trying to create an animated action, with the waves actually moving. As far as I know, that would be a GIF file. Can this be done in Photoshop Elements?

Thank you,
Tambra Turano

[photojaq]

You have really two practical choices here.

1)Use Gif animations which at 3-5 frames per second are serviceable - but have the advantage that tehy are self contained. All browsers support gif-animations without requiring any plugin;
Go here for free and shareware gif animators:
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best ... -_gif.html
the one I use is Corel Animation Shop 3 its about $35.

OR

2)Use Flash animations from Adobe/Macromedia. The best and easiest intro to this is Swishmax: http://www.crystalgraphics.com/flash/swishmax.main.asp
at $99. The official and high learning curve intro to Flash is available from http://adobe.com and cost about $300-500. Advanatge - everything is possible with Flash!
Disadvanatge: Big learning curve because most animation stuff is done programmatically with ActionScript - a JavaScript clone. There are Flash software packages that hide programming like Swishmax and Toon Boom Studio but they have prices all over the place ($99 to 500) and are always a step or two behind the latest Flash features.

So choose your poison

Just to add insult to injury Microsoft has added its own non-standard animation tool for Vista called Sparkle (part of the Expression suite for upcoming Vista OS) and the standard for animations, SVG, is slowly but surely starting to pick up adherents especially in the field of mapping, simulations, and high end product design.

Finally go here for rippling water :
http://www.2006ccwc.com/
using Flash and rip it off!