Here i am going to show you how to create realistic rain effect using photoshop CS, this tutorial is suitable for immeadiate beginners too,
now the first thing you need is to get a good source image , i used this house which is shown at a kool angle and a dog lookin out of the window supposedly because it is raining



dublicate the layer ( press Ctrl+J ) or just drag the layer to the create new layer button at the bottom of layers tool box ,

now go to Image > Image Adjustments > Levels and make your settings as shown in the image below ...



even tough the image we have is already dark ,that would have given the image the necessary dark appearance as you would have on a rainy day ..

the next step is to create rain
create a new layer (Shift+CTRL+N) with a white background and name it rain for easy reference later

now go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and make your settings as shown in the image below ....



now go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and make your settings as shown in the image below ....





now go to Image > Image Adjustments > Levels and make your settings as shown ....



go to layers pallet and change your blending mode to screen
well we got it raining already but i just want it to rain more heavily so make another copy of the rain layer, set the blending mode to screen on this layer too
and go to Edit > Transform > Rotate 180 degrees clockwise and reduce the opacity of the layer to around 82,
now with the topmost layer selected press Crl+E to merge the two top layers

now it rains but we dont have any wind , so our rain is not realistic yet , now go to Filter > Distort > Twirl and make the settings as shown below ....



and here is my final image , it rains doesnt it ??

That has to be the most amazing effect I've seen described so simply. Wow, I am going to use this on everything! Even pictures where you can see the sun Good job

Personally it doesn't look too realistic, the rain is at too much of an angle, maybe if it was slightly vertical.

looks good you should make a tut for the animated version

there already is 1 for the animated.
and the animated tut already has everything this post has w/ differnt settings
all you need to do is change the angle of the motoin blur to make it look like the rain is coming from a different angle.

That is amazingly simple and sooo effective. I'm impressed - I've tried a few different ways to get a rain effect going on and none look as great as this one. Thank you so much

I agree with dark_drgn, Since the background is at a paculiar angle I would try to match the rain with the angle of the background and then off set it just a bit.

cool dude i like it

That has to be the most amazing effect I've seen described so simply