Step 1

Open up a new document in Photoshop, in this example I am using a 600px by 600px working area.

Create two new layers, Name the first layer "ripple", and the second "water". Then select your Gradient tool or (G) and choose two nice shades of blue. Here I have used #0660a6(background) and #409ed3.(foreground)

NOTE: The further apart your fade colors are, the more harsh your ripple will look.

Step 2

Now we select the first layer, ‘ripple‘ and stretch a fade straight up from top to bottom. Darker at the bottom, lighter towards the top.

You then select your second layer ‘water’ and reverse the process, Dark at the top, light at the bottom.

Step 3

Make sure you have the ripple layer selected then. Go to filter -distort-Zigzag a new menu will open. play with the amount-(23%) Ridges-(8%) and style at pond ripples .Click ok to apply changes.

Step 4

NOTE: Select ‘Show Transform Controls’ at the top of your tool bar.

Now we drag the layer vertically squashing it to around 30% of its original height. This can also be set in the top toolbar

Step 5

Now we have our ripple and the correct angle to view on the stage we need to do some manual cleaning up. You can play around with layer effects here either by lightening or darkening the layer, I have chosen to keep it as is and perform a feathered elliptical marquee to crop off any excess layer fade. To do this select your marquee tool and make sure you have feather set, in my example it is set to 10px.

We now draw an ellipse around the area we want to crop. We then inverse the selection (Shift + Ctrl + I) and cut or mask the excess.

After your feathered mask or crop you may find you need to tidy the image up further depending on how much you cropped off, if so this can be done simple using a soft Eraser tool. finish