Transform Someone (or something) into a Water Elemental

We will transform this picture

into this one:

So grab your watercoat and lets do it.

First thing I need to do, obviously, is select the girl in the picture. I am going to use the pen tool for this task, you can use the tool that is best for you. This is the most time consuming part of the tutorial so you should be patient and make it neat!

Now with my selection made, I copy her and paste her back into a new layer.

Next I am going to use the plastic wrap filter on her by going to filter>> artistic>> plastic wrap.

I used this settings but when doing your own image you will need to find the best values that suits you. Don`t be tempted and over do it!

Ok by now she will start to look a little liquefied

Next start a new layer above her and hold down ctrl while clicking on the little icon beside our cut out girl and it should make a selection around her.

Then fill in the selection with any color because we are going to add a gradient overlay to it.

In your gradient overlay settings choose linear (1) and right-click on the gradient (2).

I picked colors from the image as my gradient colors. I chose 4 different colors from the background to match the image.

Apply the gradient into the masked selection (Had to do and redo it several times until I was happy with the result)

Then I added the overlay blending mode to it.

Now click back on your girl layer and go to image>> adjustments>> desaturate or the keyboard shortcut shift+ctrl+u.

Here is my result from the previous steps

Then I grab some nice and crispy water bubble image

and copy it into a new layer below my gradient layer. Draged the image into my canvas, placed it over my model belly and size it down to fit over it.

Now take the opacity down on the bubbles image to about 30 percent and zoom in real close to erase the part I don`t need with a soft eraser brush.

Here is what I have left:

Set its blending mode to hard light. Hited ctrl+u on my keyboard so I can adjust the hue/saturation of the layer. On this layer just take the saturation down to -91 but mess with it to get your desired result.

Then set my opacity on the layer to about 50 percent.
Did found another water bubble source and repeated the previous steps on her right arm and shoulder.

Now to make this image really stand out and look more realistic I used the ctrl+click technique on the preview icon to cut out my model from the original image and then move it to the left beside my model water girl picture (I will call this layer ColorModel. You will understand later).

In my layers palette I clicked on my original image with the water and sky in the background to select that layer. Then hold down ctrl+click on the ColorModel layer. This made a selection around her like before except this time I copied the selection from the original image and pasted it back on my canvas.

Moved it above all my other layers but wait... Where is it? I don`t see it right? Well that`s because I didn`t moved the actual layer yet. At this point you can delete (or turn invisible) the ColorModel layer. I just get rid of it.

Move the layer with the copied background on the actual canvas

Place it so it fits exactly over top of her. Set its blending mode to overlay.

After that you should start to see how we are going to make her see through since she is made of water.

At this point I noticed that the waves in the sea does not look right in the picture I just cut out.

Well just erased that part and with the clone stamp tool it was easy (and shall be no problem for you) to adjust it in the way it fits just fine.

Spend some time and attention on this background adjustment as it will give more reality to the image and don`t forget to add quite a bit of blur to it. I am doing this because it would look blurry if you were looking through water at something.

It done, I just played with some filters to give more effect in my image and... voila

I had my Water Woman! (That thanks to my real woman I wasn`t able to post in time for the last Alternate Materials: Water contest.

I hope it will be usefull to help with some new ways to get this water effect