7. Last part! Lets make the waves furthest from land more transparent so that the focus of our map comes back to the landmass itself. You may want to take the whole wave layer and turn its opacity down some. I reduced the opacity of my layer to 75%. Then using a large soft eraser (size 60-80, hardness 0%) set to 10% opacity and no shape dynamics I started carefully erasing - just to lower the opacity of the outermost waves initialy but working inwards, leaving the waves closest to shore alone.
Addendum: You can also with a bit smaller eraser go over the outer ends of the waves to dim them a bit more - and the inner areas between scallops if you have a long wave with multiple scallops. Again its just a slight change really but it just adds a bit more depth and variance that says "painted".