Faking-A-Splash

This tutorial will teach you how to make a realistic splash in Adobe Photoshop.

Image

For this tutorial, we'll be using this image. It's a simple sphere sitting on water, no splash.

Set-up

This tutorial assumes that you have a basic knowledge of using Adobe Photoshop.

Brush

Step one - Go to the standard brush and set the foreground color (the color you'll be using to paint) to white.

Step two - Open the brush settings and set the Diameter to 11, Hardness to 0, and Spacing to 117%.

Step three - Check Scattering. Set the Scatter to Both Axes and the Amount to 570%. Set the Count to 7 and the Count Jitter to 86%.

Step four - Check Color Dynamics. Set the Brightness Jitter to 23%.

The Base Splash

Create a new layer to draw the first splash on by going to layer>new>layer..., and hit Okay.

Step one - Using this brush, draw around the base of the sphere.

Step two - Now go to filter>blur>motion blur. Set the Angle to -90, and the Distance to 9.

Step three - Now go to filter>blur>Gaussian blur... Set the Radius to 1.8.

Step four - Now go to filter>distort>ocean ripple... Set the Ripple Size to 9 and the Ripple Magnitude to 11.

Step five - Create a new layer for our second splash. Open the brush settings and change the Diameter to 5.

Step six - Now go to the Scatter attributes and change the Scatter Amount to 1000%, and the Count to 6.

Step seven - Now we're doing the next tier of splashes; these will be the smaller splashes.

Step eight - Now go to filter>blur>Gaussian blur... We'll use the same settings from the last Gaussian blur.

Step nine - Now select the first layer you painted splashes on and go to filter>noise>add noise... Set the Amount to 7.16, the Distribution to Uniform, and make sure that Monochromatic is unchecked. This way it'll add color noise to the splash. This will help in overall realism.

Step ten - Now, still on the first layer, go to filter>blur>radial blur... Set the Blur Method to Zoom and leave the quality at its default. Set the Amount to 22.

Step eleven - Create a new layer and paint some foam using the brush we used to create the second tier of foam.

Step twelve - Now go to filter>blur>radial blur... Use the same settings as the last time (you might want to use less of an amount of Zoom).

Step thirteen - Now, go to the background layer (the layer the original image is on). Use the Lasso Tool to make a selection around the sphere like the one in the image below.

Step fourteen - Now go to Refine Edge... (underneath the menu bar when in the Lasso Tool). Set the settings to the image. The reason we do this is so it has a nice, soft edge on where the filtered pixels meet the non-filtered pixels.

Step fifteen - Now go to filter>blur>radial blur... Use the same settings as last time but increase the Amount to 26.

Step sixteen - Now go to filter>distort>ocean ripple... Set the Ripple Size to 15 and the Ripple Magnitude to 14.

You may want to tweak the settings above to get the image you desire. But this technique can be used for adding extra splashes on boats or anything else that needs splashes.