How to Create Awesome Splashing Water Text Effect in Photoshop

OK let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Water Splashing Brush (choose one from the list)

Lake

Font

Step 1

Create a new document sized 940px * 700px, fill the background layer with black. Load the Lake stock image into Photoshop, use the Lasso Tool with a 40px feather setting, draw a selection of the lake portion:

Copy and paste the selection on to our canvas, use a big soft brush to erase its edges, and reduce its layer opacity to around 60%. The effect is as shown below:

Duplicate the water layer twice, move the duplicated layer to the left and right of the original water layer, as shown below: (set the layer opacity to slightly lower than the original water layer to create depth)

Duplicate the original water layer once more, resize it to a smaller piece and position it to the center, then increase the layer opacity to 100%:

Add the following two adjustment layers on top of all layers created so far:

Curves

Levels

and you will have the following effect so far: (centre portion highlighted, and that will be the text will be placed)

Step 2

Now use any font you like, type a single letter on the canvas as shown below:

Apply the following layer blending options to this text layer:

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay:

Stroke

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Now let’s add some noise to the text and get ready for the water splashing effect later on. Create a new layer on top of the text called “noise”, load the selection of the text layer and fill the selection with black colour, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and apply the following setting:

The effect after you apply the noise filter:

Change the blending mode of thie noise layer to “screen”, drop the layer opacity to around 35%, you will have the following effect:

Create a new layer on top of the noise layer, name it “light and shadow”, use a combination of black and white brush, paint it as shown below:

Change the blending mode of this light and shadow layer to “Overlay” – as you can see, this add some lighting contrast to the text:

Step 4

Now we can paint some water splashing effect around text. Create a new layer called “water splash” and load the water splash brushes into Photoshop, choose some brushes from the set and paint around the text, as shown below:

Make sure when you paint the water splashing effect, use a combination of big and small sized brushsets, also adjust the flow and opacity of the brush, DO NOT just use one setting for the whole thing:

Keep adding more water splashing around the text – to be more creative, paint some water streams dropping from the edges of the text:

For the water streams, I used a 6px, soft white brush to paint in addition to the water splashing brush, as shown below:

Use the same technique to paint the water stream on the left:

You can use a small, soft white brush to draw around the edge of the text to create some waterflow/highlight effect:

Highlight effect for the text edges:

here is the effect you will be aiming to achieve so far:

Step 5

Now we will make the water splash around the text sharpen a bit. To do this, duplicate the water splash layer you’re painting on once (if you have searval layers for the water splash, group them first, then right-click on the group and choose “merge group” option).

Apply the following Smart Sharpen filter setting to the duplicated layer:

and you can see the water splash sharpened and become more visible:

Now create a new layer called “shadow” under the original text layer, grab a black soft brush and paint some shadow on the water and under the text, as shown below:

Optionally, you can add more water splashing effect around the text:

To make the text effect more dramatic, you can add some misty effect by create a new layer named “mist” just above the background layer, use a Lasso Tool with 50px feather, draw a selection around the text as shown below:

Render some cloud inside the selection, drop the layer opacity of this mist layer to around 50%, and you will have the following misty effect:

Step 6

Now we’re into the final stage of this tutorial. I feel like adding some highlights around the text, so as to make the certain parts stand out. To do this, create a new light on top of all previus layers, use a small white soft brush to paint (single-click) to the points shown below:

Now you can also use the Distrot option (available when you press Ctrl + T, then right-click) to adjust the shape of the light, to fit the angel of the latter:

I added one Color Balance image adjustment layer just to add a bit more light blue colour into the image:

Layer Mask on the Color Balance adjustment layer:

and you will have the following final effect:

OK that’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational. If you have any question, drop a comment below and I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!