Creating Smoke In Photoshop From Scratch (Noscope)

Creating Smoke In Photoshop From Scratch

« Prev Next » 08:42 on May 16, 2007 photoshop, tutorials

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…

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:

Liquify
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.

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Creating Smoke In Photoshop From Scratch
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PS Website Design says:

July 8, 2008 at 11:54

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

DavyX says:

July 27, 2008 at 23:04

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

penu says:

October 4, 2008 at 19:37

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

hayatbebek says:

December 6, 2008 at 22:32

Greats work ;) Thank you.

sen says:

August 13, 2009 at 19:29

Doesn’t look like smoke to me. Looks like a cloudy photoshop scribble.
Nice try though. You could probably get it to look more like actual smoke with those techniques if you did more by hand rather than letting the program do it.