Splash Dispersion Effect ｜ Image As A Mask ｜ Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

So I have this interesting composition here where this water of color is coming in from the sides splashing against the subject and washing color over her face and body. In this tutorial I want to share with you my technique to achieve this splash dispersion effect in Adobe Photoshop. I'm going to create this composition from scratch so you can clearly understand each step. It will help if you already have some basic understanding of how masking works in Photoshop. If you don't I have a short video on this you might want to watch before, link is in the description. I'm going to be masking a lot in this video and also doing something a little different than normal with masks which you will soon see. If you want to take a closer look at this composition you can find the link in the description. So to create a composition like this you're first going to need to source some images. You're going to need a fairly good image of a water splash, I'll talk more about this later. You're going to need an interesting background image, I have this image of space and some stars, looks pretty cool. And of course a subject, in my case I have this lady here. So with these images ready let's get into it. So I'm going to create a new document, file, new and I'm going to make the document size 17,000 by 12,000 pixels and I'm going to make the resolution 150. I have no use for this other than to demonstrate the effect, so 72 might be a little small and 300 might be just a bit too big. So somewhere in the middle for the sake of this tutorial. So first I'm going to need a subject, now in my case I purchased this image of a woman from a royalty-free website called photojune.net. I recommend this site, you can get a lot of good quality images for really fair prices. This image here cost me just a couple of dollars, so check it out. So here I am with the image open in Photoshop and if I look in my layers panel it's a single layer and there is a little lock icon on the layer. First I'm going to double click on this layer to unlock it, then I'm going to press command G to group this layer into a group like so. I'm going to call this group base. Now I need to separate the subject from the white background. To do this I'm going to use the pen tool to draw around the subject and then make a selection like so. So now we have this selection around the outline of my subject. Then I'm going to make sure I have my group selected in the layers panel and then come to the bottom of the layers panel and add a layer mask. So now I have effectively masked out the subject but the mask is applied to the group, not the image layer itself. You will see why we must have it like this later on. So now I simply need to drag this layer group into my new document like so, reposition and I am just going to scale her down a little. Pressing command T to activate free transform, press and hold shift and alt on the keyboard and click on the top right point and drag in and I can scale the subject down nicely. Then I'm going to double click on the layer name and call this base. Right so the subject is in place with the layer selected I'm going to come to the bottom of my layers panel and click on the adjustment layer icon and choose hue saturation. With the adjustments panel open I'm simply going to push the saturation down to minus 100. Now I'm going to duplicate the base layer and call this base multiply. Then I'm going to duplicate this layer again and call this base screen. Great so to the base multiply layer I'm going to apply a blending mode of multiply and that's going to make the image overall darker. And to the base screen layer I'm going to add a blending mode of screen and change the opacity to about 40 percent. Okay so next I want to apply a gradient effect to the multiply layer. So with the layer selected I'm going to apply a layer mask. With the layer mask thumbnail selected in the layers panel I'm going to make sure I have the foreground and background color set to black and white in my menu. Click and hold on the paint bucket tool and select the gradient option and I'm going to come back into my composition and click and drag across the subject like so. Now this effect is not obvious enough so I'm going to duplicate the base multiply layer and that is looking a little bit better. At this point I want to draw your attention to the adjustment layer in the layers panel. I'm just going to click this. In the layer adjustments panel we have the clip button at the bottom. Now sometimes it's important to click this to only apply the adjustment layer to the layer below. See what happens when I click this. I am now losing the effect as it's only applying the adjustment layer directly below and we can see an arrow icon in the layers panel. For this case we are not going to use this clip in action as I want this adjustment to apply to all the layers in the group below. So I'm going to release the clip. Okay so moving on. Next I'm going to come to the base layer in the group and duplicate the layer. I'm going to call this base color then I'm going to move this layer out of the group like so and toggle the group contents. So now we are back to the colored layer with our base group below but now we have a problem. I am back to the original image and now there is no mask applied to the subject. I just dragged an image out of the folder that had the mask applied so now I need to apply the same mask to this single layer. To do this I can click on the mask thumbnail of the group, right click and select add mask to selection. So now I have the selection active I can simply click back and select my new color layer and apply the mask. Simple. But I will now need to group this layer into another folder so with the layer selected I'm going to press command G and rename the group to color splash. Okay so now comes the tricky part. Now I need to open up my water splash image and we can see that this is set on a single layer. Now I'm going to have to separate this water splash from the background. This may take a little time but it will be worth it. I have an example here what you need to end up with. I have masked away the white background from the water splash. I'll quickly share an easy way how you can do this. Double click on the layer to unlock it, press command shift N to make a new layer and color this in green. Move that layer under your water splash, click back on your water splash image and apply a layer mask. Now what you need to do is select the brush tool, select a solid brush and pull up your brush panel. Click the brush tip shape, pull the spacing down to one percent. Toggle the brush size accordingly, make your color black and your opacity set this to 100% and simply start to draw on your mask layer around your water splash like so. Now this may seem tedious but here's a little tip. If you press and hold shift on the keyboard as you click you can draw straight lines. Press spacebar on the keyboard then click and drag to move around your canvas area, press and hold shift, click and carry on to mask away around the outside of your water splash. Be sure to toggle your brush size to get into all the small areas and soon you will have drawn all the way around your water splash depending on the complexity like so. Once you have drawn all the way around your water splash you can then use a bigger brush to fill in the rest until you have just your water splash cut out like so. Excellent! So once you are happy with your mask save this to your folder as water splash clip just in case you want to come back to this later. Now I'm going to right click on the layer mask and add mask to selection, then click back on the water thumbnail. I'm going to press command c to copy, come back into my artwork comp and press command v to paste. If I type 50 on the keyboard I will change the opacity to 50 percent, this will make it easy for me to resize and reposition the water splash somewhere I am happy with. Once happy I'm going to press and hold alt on the keyboard, click and drag the water splash across to quickly duplicate the layer, then I'm going to rotate this and reposition and size until I get something like this. Okay cool, so now I have the water splash looking good I'm going to change the opacity of each layer back to 100 percent. Now for the next stage you must be 100 sure you are happy with the water splash position as you need to commit to the next stage. I'm going to select both water splash layers by holding shift, selecting the top layer and then clicking the bottom. I'm going to press command e to merge them together, now I'm going to select the paint bucket tool, select a black and fill in all the areas around my transparent space until I end up with something that looks like this. Now I'm going to rename this layer to water splash mask plate. Now I need this layer to be strictly black and white, at the moment we can see there are some blue tones here. I'm going to press command u on the keyboard to pull up my hue saturation panel and push this down to minus 100 on the saturation. Notice how I did not use an adjustment layer here, I don't need to use this in this case. Next I need to click on my color splash group and simply apply a layer mask. Right, so what do we know about layer masks? It's a simple principle, the darker the color the less is revealed and the lighter the color the more is revealed. So you might be used to creating masks and using the brush tool but what if I want to create a mask using an image? For example I have just created this water splash layer. What if I want to mask away whatever is black here and reveal whatever is white? I have some nice mid-tones going on here, this could prove an interesting mask effect. Well this is in fact quite possible. To do this you will need to pull up your channels panel like so. So I'm going to come to my water splash mask plate layer, press command a to select all and press command c to copy. I'm going to toggle the visibility of this layer and I'm going to select the mask thumbnail on the color splash group. Now I'm going to come into my channels panel and what you will see is an icon on the very bottom which is currently invisible. I'm going to click to activate this layer and click the visibility and press command v to paste and check it out. I have just pasted my black and white plate into the mask channel and currently it's represented in red but don't worry about this for now. If I click back into the layers panel you will see the mask has been applied and in the mask thumbnail on the group we have our new mask. Excellent! Now it's a simple case of opening up my background image, selecting all and copying, coming back into my comp, coming into the color splash group and pasting this into the group like so and I can move this around to reposition and place. I will have to drag this layer however under the subject like so. If I press and hold alt on the keyboard I can click and drag to duplicate the layer and move it around and that's looking pretty cool but the color of the woman is looking a little weak so I'm going to duplicate the base color layer and apply a multiply blending mode. I'm going to duplicate the layer again but this time apply an overlay blending mode and that's looking a lot better. So now I can spend some time fine tuning my water splash mask. If I click on the group mask, zoom in, choose a round brush, change the opacity to 50% I can just tweak the mask and bring some of the transparent images back so I can just show a little bit more color here. So that's pretty much how to create the effect though you may be wondering how I created the additional shape effects. To do this I used a custom brush, I have another video on this link is in the description. I have a triangle brush here but to create the effect I opened up my brush panel I toggled the spacing, toggled the size jitter, toggled the angle jitter and toggled the scattering and count. Make sure your brush is set to white and start to draw onto the mask like so but be careful you might not always get the effect you want so press command z to undo and try and do it in stages and you might want to toggle your brush size as you go along just to get various effects. Then I can do the same thing but this time with another brush, perhaps a round brush and just keep adding to your overall mask effect until you get something you are happy with. Just keep experimenting and see what results you can get. So that's my water splash dispersion effect in adobe photoshop. I hope you enjoyed this video tutorial if you liked the tutorial hit the like button on my facebook fan page and even add me as a friend. Don't forget you can download the document you saw in this tutorial all links are in the description. If you happen to have a go at this yourself be sure to come and paste it up on my facebook wall I'd love to see what you can come up with. Well that's it for another video brought to you by tastytuts.com have fun guys and I'll see you next time.