There are many ways to evoke a mood in our photos. Lighting, figure posing, and the right setting are all effective when done well, but one element has always been difficult to achieve in miniature. Weather effects, specifically rain, can be tricky to do “in camera”, for various reasons. Real water is difficult to control, the droplets don’t scale down, and a lot of us do our diorama setups indoors and don’t want to risk getting our custom figures and photo gear wet.
This is where programs like Photoshop come in, and I’ve put this tutorial together to allow you to easily add digital rain to your photos. I used my ancient copy of Photoshop 7, but the technique is simple enough to work even with earlier versions.