The boot process of the Raspberry Pi is usually generating tons of console output which can be overlayed/hidden to the user by using a custom splash image.

Activating the splash screen

In order to use the splash image instead of the console output the option has to be activated:

sudo raspi-config  

and then:

3 - Boot options  B3 Splash Screen  Choose "Yes"  

Inserting a custom splash image

Plymouth presents a graphic animation (also known as a bootsplash) while the system boots. It provides eye-candy and a more professional presentation for scenarios where the default high-information text output might be undesirable. It also handles boot prompts, such as entering disk encryption passwords.

If not installed yet, install plymouth using this command:

sudo apt install plymouth plymouth-themes

In order to overwrite the default splash image (raspberry graphic), the desired custom image must be defined (format: PNG). It's mandatory to be named splash.png and be located in directory /home/shares/nameOfShare. Execute the following command in order to overwrite the default image:

sudo cp /home/shares/nameOfShare/splash.png /usr/share/plymouth/themes/pix/splash.png  

Reducing the console output on boot

Edit the following file by executing the following command:

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt  

The file contains a single line with all boot options. Replace the following option (Take care that there is only a single newline at the end of the file)

console=tty1   

with

console=tty3   

Then add

loglevel=3   

to the line in order to suppress non-critical console output. Now add

logo.nologo   

to the line in order to not show the four raspberry logos on startup.

Testing the changes

Save with Ctrl + X, configm with Y and run

sudo reboot  

in order to check if the changes have been applied successfully.

The following boot process should now only show the new logo and a single line that indicates the currently starting service.