This tutorial is not aimed at teaching you new methods in PhotoShop. Instead it’s just an illustration of an alternate way of solving a problem with the basic tools found in most graphic programs. There are many ways to approach image manipulation without relying on filters and actions that sometimes give you less than a satisfactory result. A combination of a simple approach combined with some filter use can be just as effective overall. In this example the only filter used was noise.

As usual, all steps are done on separate layers.

Here's the original source:



It was chosen for it’s good color, range of density and interesting water droplets.