How to create a wet road effect using Gimp

Follow this step by step Gimp tutorial to learn how to make a dry road look wet, like it has just been raining.

Open a picture of a dry road you want to make look wet.

Click here to download picture of a road used in this tutorial.

Right click the road layer and choose Duplicate Layer.

If you can't see the Layers window press Ctrl + L to make it visible.

Choose the Overlay mode for the new duplicated layer.

In the menu click Layer, Transform and choose Rotate 180°.

The new duplicated layer need to be selected.

In the menu click Layer, Transform and choose Flip Horizontally.

Now choose the Move Tool (press M for a keyboard shortcut).

And move (drag and drop) the duplicated layer up a bit like I did.

The original road and the duplicated flip road should be touching at the end (see picture).

Now choose the Scale Tool.

Click the picture and drag the bottom end of the picture to cover the part of the dry road that got exposed in step 7.

Press Enter.

Now we have a bit at the end of the road uncovered. 

Again click the picture, only now drag the upper end of the layer out of the bound a bit to cover the dry part.

Now lets get rid of the parts of the duplicated layer around the road that we don't need.

Choose the Eraser Tool ...

... set the Size to about 104 ...

Depends on the size of your image.

... and erase the parts of the duplicated layer around the road only to leave the road wet.

In the menu click Filters, Blur and choose Motion Blur...

As a Blur Type choose Linear, set the Length to 15 and Angle to 90.

Click OK.

Set the duplicated layer's opacity to 80.

All we have to do now is to adjust the duplicated layer levels a bit.

In the menu click Colors and choose Levels...

Set black tones to about 26 and middle tones to about 0,82.

Click OK.

Congrats, you did it, nice little effect that doesn't take too much of the effort or time.

Click here for the Photoshop version of a wet road effect tutorial.