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Realistic Rain Effect

Photoshop Tutorial

Summary:
Did you ever want to change a sunny photo so that it looks like it's raining, dark, and gloomy? In this tutorial, we'll learn how to apply a realistic looking rain effect to any photograph.

Step-By-Step Instructions:
1. Open the image you want to apply this effect to. In my case it is a nice small southern church on warm sunny day:

2. Goto Layers and create a new layer. Fill the entire layer with black fill:

3. Goto Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Put noise amount up to 400%, check Gaussian and Monochromatic:

4. Goto Filter>Blur>Gaussian and set the radius to 1px. Your image will look close to this:

5. Go back to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. At this time use the settings as shown on the image but you can also experiment with them and set it according to the strength of the rain effect you want to set:

6. Goto Layers palette and set blend mode of Layer1 to Screen:

7.We now have applied the rain effect over the image, but it looks more like a sun-shower than a heavy gloomy rain we're looking for:

8. In Layers palette click on your background layer. Go to Image> Adjustments> Brightness/Contrast. Set Brightness to -25 and Contrast to -10. You can also go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and drop the Saturation done a little to create gray overcast effect:

9. We are now almost done but there are still some parts of the image that look a little too bright. Go to Layers palette, create new layer and set the blend mode to "overlay". Select comfortable size brush and black fill color, set the opacity of brush to 50% and paint over the parts of the image that appear too bright:

10. As a last step you can select layer with rain effect on it, press Ctrl+M to call Curves dialog and make your rain a little more or less prominent. The finished image will look close to mine: