Using Photoshop and a specific technique, it’s rather easy to create something that looks like smoke or fog—from scratch. It’s not as good as actual smoke photographed on a black background, but it’s much easier to come by. Here’s the trick…
Doodle
Draw a doodle. Preferrably keep the doodle in its own layer with a black background beneath.
Distort
Use the Liquify tool to distort the doodle. Liquify resides in the Filter > Liquify... menu. Using the various “forward warp”, “twirl” and “pucker” tools residing in the menu to the left, you distort the doodle as if you were fingerpainting.
Once you’ve applied the liquify transformation, select Edit > Fade Liquify.... In the dialog box that appears, set the opacity to 50% and apply.
Repeat
Now repeat the process until you’re satisfied:
- Liquify
- Fade Liquify to 50%
If you enjoyed this tutorial, you might also enjoy my Creating Microworlds in Photoshop tutorial.
Nice trick. I love tutorials. All this time reading your blog I had a slight hope that you will publish some. (Especially in Flash
).
Well now I have the time, so maybe!
Interesting tutorial!
One way to make the smoke look more realistic would be to use Liquify to create large and small swirls and eddies in the layers to recreate the turbulence inherent to actual smoke.
(Sorry. I’m getting my PhD by doing work on turbulence, so I’m compelled to mention these sorts of things.)
That’s exactly right.
The thing is, this technique is scalable in the way that if take the time necessary to create great detail, you’ll get much more realistic results. The screenshots shown here are pretty basic and quick.
Well explained.
Pretty Neat… I believe actions in PS can also be applied to this.
Maybe. The thing is, each “liquify” process requires a different distortion for the results to be good. You may need actual Photoshop scripting if you plan to automate it.
Awesome! Thanks a lot for this. =)
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I love a good photoshop tutorial. Thx dude.
Realy nice tutorial, and this is one of the best tricks i saw. Thanks a lot mate!
Wow, that’s pretty cool! Thank you for sharing.
intresting tutorial!!
I can’t believe that the smoke came out of the doodle!!
Awesome. Nice trick, will try it soon.
Not only is this digg worthy.. it’s stumble worthy
.
^ How I came by it
cool, ill try it now…. it is indeed digg n’ stumble worthy
Definitely a nice tutorial and very quick and to the point. I’ll have to save this one to give it a try here in the next few days… thanks for sharing this!
yeah, lot more stumblers out there than I thought, great tutorial, it’ll be good for class.
very cool trick. I will def be trying it out.
Add me to that list of stumblers. Nice effect!
[...] absolutely awful. However as a designer it may be necessary at times to recreate it. And lucky me, Joen of Noscope has just the way to do so in a very fun [...]
I had some fun with this
That was pretty cool. I think I will try it.
yum
not only is it stumble- and digg-worthy, i’d say it is also, (insert shameless self-promotion), tumblr-worthy. thanks for the tip and in such a concisely written way. lovely.
Nice technique, thanks. I’ll have to practice this…
Another Stumbler here. Nice one dude.
are you all blind?! this is a terrible example of photoshop ability. WHOEVER MADE THIS NEEDS TO BE SPLASHED WITH HOLY WATER AND STABBED THROUGH THE HEART WITH A STAKE!!!! that is all…goodbye.
XD stumble rocks, another one here.
Whawhowhoa! Sorry, don’t mind me, just stummbling through. (Freaking artsy-fartsy…)
That’s very useful sir. I enjoyed this. Found you from stumbleupon.
brilliant .. just brilliant !
Thanks for that. I am doing an animation based on the word “fire” at the moment, and the smoke trick is obviously very useful.
Great! What a great way to “make some smoke” Or fog. I didn’t know it seems so easy. I thought that one had to go through a lot more just to get some smoke.
nice shortcut methods !!
like it
cheers !
Hi there,
wonderful idea
cheers and cheerio
niice werk cap’n. helluh-uh useful.
Very pretty! Found it useful, thanks.
This is so ratical I know I spelt it wrong
Great and easy way to create some smoke..
Love it!!
(Stumble send me here)
Found your through stumble upon and really enjoyed this tutorial. I will definitely use it again in the future!
Flippin’ marvelous.
Love the effect. Cheers.
An excellent method of enhancing the crap resuls of ‘nearly made it’ smoke shots
definately diggworthy!!!
great smoke tutorial
Very cool!
I don’t use whatever digg is…. but I do Stumble… and its certainly worthy of a ‘like’ on stumble.
thanks for the GREAT post! Very useful…
Very informative and useful. I have to try this soon.
Thanks