Creating Smoke In Photoshop From Scratch

May 16th, 2007 ,

Smoke - How To

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…

Update: In a blatant attempt at self promotion, I’ve submitted this to digg to see what happens. We’ll see if it’s diggworthy.

Doodle

Smoke, Step 1

Draw a doodle. Preferrably keep the doodle in its own layer with a black background beneath.

Distort

Smoke, Step 2

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.

Smoke, Step 3

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:

  1. Liquify
  2. Fade Liquify to 50%

Smoke, Step 4 Smoke, Step 5 Smoke, Step 6 Smoke, Step 7 Smoke, Step 8 Smoke, Step 9

If you enjoyed this tutorial, you might also enjoy my Creating Microworlds in Photoshop tutorial.


Comment pages: « 1 [2]

  1. nice shortcut methods !!
    like it

    cheers !

  2. Hi there,

    wonderful idea

    cheers and cheerio

    Quote Aldrine Einsteen said November 14th, 2007, 14:14:
  3. niice werk cap’n. helluh-uh useful.

  4. Very pretty! Found it useful, thanks.

  5. This is so ratical I know I spelt it wrong

  6. Great and easy way to create some smoke..
    Love it!!

    (Stumble send me here)

  7. Found your through stumble upon and really enjoyed this tutorial. I will definitely use it again in the future!

  8. Flippin’ marvelous.

  9. Love the effect. Cheers.

  10. An excellent method of enhancing the crap resuls of ‘nearly made it’ smoke shots

    Quote I will use this - thank you said November 18th, 2007, 03:52:
  11. definately diggworthy!!!

    great smoke tutorial

  12. Very cool!

  13. I don’t use whatever digg is…. but I do Stumble… and its certainly worthy of a ‘like’ on stumble.

  14. thanks for the GREAT post! Very useful…

  15. Very informative and useful. I have to try this soon.
    Thanks

  16. Thanks, you made my day! Just what I was looking for.

  17. This is without a doubt one of the best and most natural looking Smoke effects I’ve found in my searches.

    The effect is just what I’ve been looking for.
    This tutorial ROCKS

  18. These is a very helpful tutorial indeed… Great work! Thanks for the resource.

  19. brilliant (come on arsenal)

  20. Great technique, will certainly be using this on my next website design. Stumbled it! -thumbs up!

  21. SIMLPY BRILLIANT.Thanks a lot….this will be invaluable.

  22. Got to tell you that this tutorial is the sh@t

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