World Water Day Pictures

If you don't know, on March 22nd, 2010 was celebrated the World Water Day, a day for consciousness of how bad things are going with our clean water. And if our clean water is bad, we are faded to a rough future.

These pictures are my selection of a bigger collection at GETNEWMORE.COM. For all the 43 (or so) pictures, I hope you all enjoy this, and please, save water for our future. ;)

The Maya believed natural wells, such as the Xkeken cenote in Mexico's Yucatan, led to the underworld. (John Stanmeyer, VII, © National Geographic)

India's holiest river, the Ganges, is scribbled with light from floating oil lamps during the Ganga Dussehra festival in Haridwar. Hindus near death often bathe in the river; some are later cremated beside it and have their ashes scattered on its waters. (John Stanmeyer, VII, © National Geographic)

Jared Otieno, a worker with the Kenyan Ministry of environment and mineral resources, sprinkles water cupped in his hand as he and other workers who helped clean two-and-a-half miles of the Nairobi river basin in Nairobi greet foreign United Nations visitors to the river basin site on March 21, 2010. (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

Floating on dreams and whispers, girls from a West Bank village cool off in the salt-laden waters of the Dead Sea. With its main tributary, the Jordan, at less than a tenth of its former volume, the inland sea has dropped some 70 feet since 1978. (Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum © National Geographic)

A man swims in a pool inside a condominium in Singapore March 21, 2010. (REUTERS/Nicky Loh)

A boy swims in the murky waters of Manila Bay March 21, 2010. (REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo)

A swan swims at Lake Toepper (Toeppersee) in the western German city of Duisburg on March 11, 2010.

Balancing on a slippery makeshift ladder, women pass precious gallons hand to hand up a well nine people deep in the Marsabit region of northern Kenya. After the water reaches the surface, the women will compete for it with thirsty livestock. (Lynn Johnson, © National Geographic)

Flood water drains from a ditch along Interstate 29 March 21, 2010 south of Fargo, North Dakota. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Upsala Glacier as seen from the International Space Station in February of 2010. Upsala is a large valley glacier in Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park. Google Map. (NASA/JSC)

Dry conditions produce cracked earth at a reservoir in Shilin county, Yunnan province, China, on Thursday, March 4, 2010. Yunnan is experiencing its worst drought in more than 60 years. (Ariana Lindquist/Bloomberg)

A Chinese softball player hits a ball during a sandstorm in Beijing on March 20, 2010. Beijingers woke up to find the Chinese capital blanketed in yellow dust, as a sandstorm caused by a severe drought in the north and in Mongolia swept into the city. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

A dead fish is seen floating in a polluted river on the outskirts of Yingtan, Jiangxi province March 20, 2010. (REUTERS/Stringer)

Mahendra Kumar surfaces to catch his breath as he dives into a polluted section of the River Yamuna to scavenge for ornaments and coins left by Hindu rituals at the river bank, in New Delhi, India, Monday, March 22, 2010. Officials say factories are ignoring regulations and dumping untreated sewage and industrial pollution, turning toxic the river that gives the capital much of its drinking water. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

A villager bathes under a hose pipe used for the irrigation of rice field, as his son, left, looks on, on the outskirts of Amritsar, India, Monday, March 22, 2010. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

A floating restaurant is stranded in a branch of the Yangtze River in Chongqing Municipality, March 21, 2010. A severe drought across a large swath of southwest China is now affecting more than 50 million people, and forecasters see no signs of it abating in the short term, state media said on Friday. (REUTERS/Stringer)

4,000 baby bottles containing polluted water stand on the Bundesplatz in Bern, Switzerland, Monday, March 22. 2010. The action was organized by the Swiss association for International Cooperation Helvetas to highlight the UN's World Water Day. (AP Photo/Keystone/Peter Klaunzer)

A fisherman paddles his canoe through dead fish along Manaquiri River, a tributary of the Amazon, near the city of Manaquiri, November 28, 2009. The world's biggest rainforest is suffering from seasonal drought, killing tons of fish. (REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker)

Severed from the edge of Antarctica, this iceberg might float for years as it melts and releases its store of fresh water into the sea. The water molecules will eventually evaporate, condense, and recycle back to Earth as precipitation. (Camille Seaman, © National Geographic)

A drop of water falls from a melting piece of ice on Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier near the city of El Calafate, in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, December 16, 2009. (REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci) 

GETNEWMORE-Photo Manipulation of a Flooded City Scene

In this tutorial, we will learn how to manipulate a simple photo into a flooding torrent of a scene. We’ll use some relatively simple techniques to give this image a semi-realistic, stylized feel. Let’s get started!

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Step 1

With the main image opened, use the Clone Stamp tool to remove any unwanted entities, like the elderly couple walking. Try and clone areas around the couple so it doesn’t look odd and mix your usage of soft, and heavy round brushes to define those edges.

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Step 2

Next you will want to cut around the edges of the roof tops so we can add in our stormy sky. Use the Polygon Lasso Tool for this. Don’t worry about accuracy, as we’ll be blending everything later, just make sure that the sky is cut out. Once selected, unlock the “background.” Now double-click the layer, then rename it to “backdrop” and hit Enter. Delete the sky.

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Step 3

Open the Stormy Sky image and place it underneath your “backdrop” layer. Then press Command + T to Free Transform), hold Command while you drag the bottom corners inwards to add some perspective to the sky, don’t forget to resize if necessary. Apply the transformation when you are happy.

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Step 4

It doesn’t look very nice does it? That’s because we’re not done yet. Open and place the wave image in the center of the image. Now use the eraser, and a soft brush on it. Get in close and erase the bits you don’t want. Don’t worry if your messy, as the tidying comes later.
Then go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and use the settings shown below.

Then go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and use these settings.

Rename the layer to “Wave,” and your image should now look like the one shown below.

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Step 5

Now comes the complicated bit. What you’ll need to do is add all the water files to you’re image and one by one, free transform them to flow with the perspective of the water then erase the hard edges.
You might also need to duplicate some files in order to fill up areas. Always remember to play about with the textures using the distortion method in free transform and a soft eraser. The more you do, the better it will look. You can see the phases of building up the flooding water in this image.

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Step 6

Now we have our water sorted, merge all the “water” layers into one single layer and go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance and use the following settings.
Your water should now be nice and blue and match the “wave” layer from earlier. Now merge the “wave” layer with the “water” one.

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Step 7

Remember the tidy up I mentioned a while back? Well its time now. Turn off the “water” layer so you are left with just the backdrop and the sky.
With the Burn Tool selected at highlights and at 50% exposure, and a soft brush set, start burning the rooftops and the sky around the rooftops so they appear darker.

Open the derelict1 image and place it at the right side of the street in the distance. Use a soft eraser to remove those sharp edges. Merge it with the “backdrop” layer.

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Step 8

Let’s tidy up some more. Turn on the “water” layer sand and start tidying around the edges using a soft eraser. Then select the Smudge Tool and a 20px charcoal brush using the settings below.

Start smudging the edges of the “water” layer creating very small splashes and more defined edges to realistically create the effect of water hitting a surface. This might require patience and a steady hand, but time will pay off. It might also be wise to duplicate the layer before smudging as you don’t want to use all your undo’s.

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Step 9

Next, select the backdrop layer and go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance and use these settings.

And your piece should now be coming together. Its still a little off, but there is a lot more to do, so lets move on!

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Step 10

Time for the splashes. Now this is the hardest step of the tutorial, and requires a lot of patience, but persevere and you will find that patience is in fact a virtue (I know, silly right?).
Open up the splash1 and splash2 images and carefully cut out the splashes themselves one by one. Place them onto the canvas. Now use the Warp Transformation (Edit > Transform > Warp) to get the arches you need to create effective splashes, and erase any unwanted areas.

You’ll need to do this for the two cars and for where the water hits the wall down the buildings of the street.
You might also benefit from smudging the edges of the splashes to give them more movement, as well as adding some white brushing to a new layer and smudging it. Now merge all your “splash” layers.

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Step 11

Getting there right? Now you need to do some tweaking to the colors of the image. This can mean anything from water, to the sky or the buildings. In my example, I think the water is a little too blue, so I’m going to desaturate it a little.
Basically use this step for any odd bits and bobs to tweak your image to make it look more streamlined. Be creative, and more importantly, make it look tidy. I lowered the saturation of the water a little, and added some red to the buildings.

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Step 12

Now we’ll work on the fog. Its sounds daunting but its actually fairly simple to do. Select a blue color from your water using the Eyedropper Tool. Now select the Gradient Tool and use the following settings.

You will need to create a new layer underneath you’re “water” layer and create the gradient so it blocks out any backdrop behind the water.
Duplicate the layer (Command + J) and place it on top of your water layer, at about 30% opacity. Set this layer to Multiply.

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Step 13

This next step is to add rain. There are lots of tutorials on the web that show how to create rain. Here is one that goes into great detail, which you could check out. We’ll keep it relatively simple in this tutorial though. First, create a new layer and fill it with black. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and use these settings.

Then Filter > Blur > Motion Blur> and use these settings.

Then Image > Adjustments > Levels and use the following settings.

Set the Layer to Screen and use a soft eraser to erase the bottom and top of the Layer, then go to Edit > Transform > Free Transform the “rain” Layer so it covers the whole screen.

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Step 14

It looks a little bit empty in the middle of the water doesn’t it?
Open up the car image and place it somewhere in the distance, underneath the “fog” layer. Resize the images and erase the edges carefully and use the splash1 image to give some life to the car.

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Step 15

Now is the fun part. You’ll need to create a few gradient maps first. Click the Adjustment layer button located at the bottom of your layers window and select the Gradient Map option. Then Click the little arrow in the top-right of the box and select Pastels as shown.

Use the following settings. Finally, set the layer to Multiply at 100%.

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Conclusion

Now its just a case of adding depth and a few other adjustments. Select the Blur Tool at 20% strength, then start blurring the “backdrop” layer in the distance and on the rooftops.

Create a new layer and go to Image > Apply Image and then go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen, which gives the image a more detailed and stylized feel. Now you’re done!