Photoshop Smoke Effect

There are many methods out there for creating digital smoke. I stumbled upon this particualr method while trying to get a soft water effect. I adjusted it a bit and the result is this technique for creating smoke.

The brush panel settings used to paint the initial white lines are as follows: I start off with a soft edge round brush (hardness set to 0%). Airbrush and Smoothing are checked. Other Dynamics is checked with the Opacity Jitter at 0%, Control is off, and Flow Jitter at 0% with Control set to pen pressure (I use a Cintiq).

PS: Apologies for the bad audio.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• photoshop
• painting
• smoke
• effect
• design
• particle
• vapor
• smoking
• fumes
• digital
• graphic

[Migueleins]

Hey realy nice job with that. i been searching some techniques about smoke for a image i wanna do. and i like the smoke its use in here "ww.stval.fr/images/stories/DA­divers/stephanie_valentin_01.j­pg" Any idea how to achive it ?

[karenmcdade]

@Migueleins You can achieve the same kind of effect by using some images of smoke with a black background. Mask out the edges of the smoke image, set the layer style to screen to remove the black, then use transform and warp (or liquify) to move it around into the shape you want.

[PistonAndPistol]

@karenmcdade hello can u tell me how to do that warp again please

[karenmcdade]

@PistonAndPistol Select your smoke layer then go to Edit > Transform > Warp. Click and hold your mouse cursor over the edge handles of the warp mesh to fold it over itself until you get the look you're going for. Hope this helps.

[i7full]

you sound sexy :)

[715Crosshair]

Really well done tutorial and very simple steps, thank you for the help

[Nirvana11b]

Great tutorial but I was wondering if I can turn this into a brush also my smoke is coming out very pixalated I'm hoping you can tell me why that is?

[curefm2]

ooohhh nnooo!!! i dont speak english, i dont understend

[Buddhaboi77]

you sound soooooo hot :D

[joshanator1]

This tutorial was very informative. Thank you. However, the quality of the video was such that I had a hard time following you because I couldn't see what windows were open and the minor details such which brush you were using. The size and shape. That sort of thing.

[DcoldOne24]

hi babe can you teach me how dougie?

[rickritz1]

Thanks for one of the easiest methods I've found so far. I like taking it further a bit and duplicating the smoke layer, then blurring it also. You can also make a third layer and render with clouds to really increase the realistic effect. (Have to select an area to render then lightly erase the edges to blend it.)

[CageYueSL]

I found that you need to use the Minimum option, not the Maximum option in Filter/Other for this to work.

[MamaNikon]

Hi, thanks so much for sharing this info. I'm following the instructions and however there were a few things I couldn't understand (though yr accent is lovely) so I'm not getting the same results: which brush was that? From there, I have followed the instructions but it's not the same at all.

I just found the above written brush info: I have CS5...not sure what Cintiq is-that may be the difference