Being an novice, this is my first success at trying to get a watercolor splash view. I didn't see this anywhere else, so I decided to post my attempt. There are probably better ways to do this, but I haven't gotten to that point yet.
First. start with your image of the watercolor splash you want to use.
I also loaded my image I wanted to use of the girl on a separate tab. So I copy the image of the girl and paste it over my watercolor splash image.
I select the girl layer and I reduce it to a black and white. I used HSL adj layer and set saturation all the way down, but you can also use B&W adj layer too.
Now I add a curves adj layer. I take the master channel. I slide the highlights (right top) node to the left. I adjust the shadows (left bottom) node to the right. I adjust for a high contrast image.
Now in the layers menu, I rasterize to mask.
You will now have the watercolor showing through the black and gray areas, all white areas are transparent.
Now I unlock the watercolor layer and move, rotate, resize to adjust my display. I didn't modifying the mask, but I suppose you can.
Once I get the picture to where I like it, I paste another copy of the girl photo in a new layer. I add an HSL or B&W adj layer and make a nice looking detailed image. I add a mask. Invert the mask, and now paint in the parts of the image with a hardness of zero, a flow I set to 12, and opacity I set to 12. You can play with this.
Once I paint in hints of detail to complement the image, I then flatten this document.
Last I added a rectangle shape placed it at the bottom, you can adjust color to choice, add a gradient, or whatever. And you are done. I hope you can find something useful. It is my first success at this, so I haven't figured out anything to simplify the process yet. Cheers.
