Water on Wood
Final Image Preview
Steps
1. We're going to attempt fairly realistic water on wood. Open a new file in Adobe Photoshop, size 400px by 400px (or any size, just not too small).2. Make a new layer, and change your color to the regular blue. Then click on the Custom Shape Tool, change it to a circle, and draw some circles and ovals all over.

3. When it looks somewhat puddle-like, go to Image- Liquify and using the first button, liquify parts of your picture so it's more water droplet- like. Click OK when you're done.

4. Double click your layer so you open up the layer styles. Click each of styles, shown here, in Photoshop and match my settings.




Then click on the link at the top that says Blending Options: Custom and change the fill opacity to 15%. This is what it should look like now:

5. Click on the background layer and make a new layer (this is just so the new layer is under your other one). Fill it in with a nice #993300 brown color.
Go to Filter- Noise- Add Noise, and change it to 15%, Gaussian, and check Monochromatic.

6. To get the wood grain, go to Filter- Blur- Motion Blur. Change it to 0 degrees and 999 pixels.

7. Wood grain isn't this pointy and sharp, so go to Filter- Blur- Gaussian Blur at around 4 pixels.
And here's our final product: