How to Make a Fish Jump Out of Water

In this photo-manipulation tutorial, we are going to learn how to create a fish jumping out of water with a lot of splashes from its glorious jump. We will learn how to create water splashes through the use of Photoshop brushes, blend images together, and form realistic water inside the glass complete with bubbles.

Preview of Final Results

How to Make a Fish Jump Out of Water Photo-manipulation using Photoshop (Custom)

How to Make a Fish Jump Out of Water Photoshop Tutorial

Tutorial Details

Program: Adobe Photoshop CS2
Difficulty: Hard
Estimated Completion Time: 1 to 2 hours

Resources:

Water textures by ElithaStock (Creative Commons License)
Water Background by knightfall-stock (Creative Commons License)
Glass 001 by DeviantDualityStock (Creative Commons License)
Gold Fish by Tracie76Stock (Royalty Free License)
Hand 014 by ISOStock (Creative Commons License)
Water Bubbles by millertimemsu (Royalty Free License)
Water Brushes Sampler by FrozenStarRo (Royalty Free License)
Splash Brushes by Baringa-of-the-wind (Royalty Free License)

Step 1 – Create the Photoshop document

To start, we will need to create a new image file, go to the Menu bar and click File > New, and then input the following values on their respective fields:

Width – 3000 pixels
Height – 3000 pixels
Resolution – 300 dpi
Color Mode – RGB Color; 8bit
Background Contents – Transparent

Step 2 – Create the glass and the room

In this Step, we will be making the room with the glass; we will also be using a Gradient to enhance the feel of the room. Open the stock image – Glass 001 and left-click on it and then drag the glass to the new canvas using the Move tool (V). When you’ve done that, activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) because we would need to reposition the glass for composition purposes.

Now you might be wondering what happens to the extra space, well we would still make use of that extra space. In order for that to happen we would need to stretch some parts of the background. Activate the Rectangular Marquee tool (M); this tool’s purpose is for creating a selection area or merely selecting an area on the image; to use it, just left-click on a point and drag the mouse to form a rectangle selection area.

Once you’ve created a selection area, activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) and pull it up to increase its length. See image below:

Now, after you’ve done that let’s activate the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) once again to create another selection area.

Activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) and follow the instructions on the image below:

Now the background and our subject are in its intended composition, we would now fix the color and enhance the look of the background. First let’s adjust its Saturation because the image looks too warm and we don’t want that since we’re going to add water and splashes in it, in short, we want it cool.

Let’s create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. To do that click on the Create New Fill layer/Adjustment layer on the Layer window and when the menu pops up, click on the Hue/Saturation button.