Smoke Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a smoke typography effect playing with some brushes and adjustment layers. It's a very easy tutorial and you will be able to do the whole process in 5-10 minutes

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document, I used 1920x1200 pixels. Then apply a gradient, you could fill it with a gradient or apply a Layer Style. I used the layer style, Gradient Overlay. Use Radial for the Style and #07090a - #202b35 for the colors.

Step 2

Add some text in white then go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Use 90º for the Angle, and 40 pixels for the Distance.

Step 3

Now go to Filter>Distort>Wave. use 3 for the Number of Generators, 10 and 346 for the Wavelength, and 5 and 35 for the Amplitude.

Step 4

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius. Then group the layer and rename the folder's Blend Mode to Color Dodge. You will get a nice light effect.

Step 5

Create a new layer on top of the others and go to Filter>Render>Clouds, make sure you had black and white for the background and foreground colors, then change the Blend Mode to Color Dodge and go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All. With a very soft brush, 0% hardness and black color, hide some areas of the clouds layer. Use the image below for reference.

Step 6

Create a new Folder on the Layers' Palette. Change the folder's Blend Mode to Color Dodge and add a new layer in it. Then use the Smoke Brushes from Qbrushes . Select white for the color and paint over some letters. If you think the brush is not very bright, just click twice.

Step 7

Paint a few more smokes like the image below.

Step 8

Create a new layer beneath the other layers but in front of the Background layer. Fill this layer with black and go to Filter>Texture>Texturizer. Use 100% for the Scaling and 4 for the Relief. For the Texture use Canvas and Light use Top. That will add a nice texture to the image but you will need to change the opacity to 10%.

Step 9

This is a nice new feature in the new Photoshop CS4, actually there's nothing new just the Adjustments palette, but it's very useful because you can edit all the image adjustments like Levels, Hue & Saturation, Curves in that palette. However it just adds a Adjustment Layer, that could be done in the previous versions too.

Anyway, on top of the other layers just add the Invert adjustment. You can go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Invert. It will be the same. You will get a very nice effect, like burning paper.

Retouch and Healing Tools

Spot Healing Brush Tool

The Spot Healing Brush is primarily used to quickly remove blemishes, imperfections or other unwanted elements from an image. To use it, paint over an imperfection you’d like to get rid of using a suitable brush (brushes can be selected and modified in the options bar). The Spot Healing Brush Tool will automatically try to repair the imperfection by sampling the surrounding area.

 

 

Healing Brush Tool

The Healing Brush Tool performs a similar function to the spot healing brush tool mentioned above. Instead of automatically trying to determine the lighting, shading, and texture from the surrounding area, the healing brush tool lets you manually select a source, and then paint over an imperfection. To select a source, hold alt and click the desired part of the image. Then paint over the area you wish to replace. As with the Spot Healing Brush Tool, settings such as brush size can be controlled in the options bar.

 

 

 Patch Tool

With the Patch Tool, an entire area can be repaired with pixels from another area. Just like the healing brush tool, the patch tool will try to correct lighting, shading, and texture. To use the patch tool, first draw a selection with any of the selection tools (or the patch tool, which will function as a lasso tool). Then, using the patch tool, drag that selection over the destination you want to use to repair that area.

 

 Clone Stamp Tool

The final tool we’ll cover in this tutorial is called the Clone Stamp Tool. The Clone stamp tool allows you to paint with a sample of an image.

Keep in mind that you are not healing/repairing an image when you use the Clone Stamp Tool. Therefore, lighting and shading will not be maintained when you paint over an area. What you see is literally what you get when you paint from a given source, making it very useful in certain situations.

 

 Blur & Sharpen Tools

The Blur and Sharpen Tools allow us to manipulate edges by making them softer or harder. They do exactly what you would expect them to do; blur and sharpen.
Both tools have similar attributes such as Strength (increase or decrease the strength of the tool, or how much it will blur) and the brush, all of which can be adjusted in the Options Bar for each tool. To use the blur or sharpen tool, simply set up the brush to your specification, hold down the mouse button, and hover over the areas you’d like to alter in your image.

 

Surreal Motionscape Effect With Photoshop CS6

In this Photo Effects tutorial, we’ll learn how to add a more surreal, otherwordly look to an image with an easy-to-create vertical motionscape effect using Photoshop CS6. This effect often works great with landscape photos, especially ones with lots of detail from top to bottom.

As we’ll see, all it takes is the Motion Blur filter and a layer mask, and we’ll be using a Smart Object and Smart Filter to keep the effect fully editable for some final tweaking at the end.

 

the final motionscape effect will look like:

 

5 Ways to Perfect Your Digital Paintings

Most artists will tell you that there is no such thing as a perfect painting. There are always parts of a painting that can be tweaked or improved. The best an artist can do is to bring the artwork as close to "perfect" as possible. That is because, in art, there is no right or wrong, everything is subjective; different artists have different opinions about what looks good and what does not. With that said, there are a few guidelines that you can use to help you produce better art. So in this article, we will present you with a list of 5 tips that you can use to help you make your artwork as close to perfect as possible. Let’s take a look!

Planning the Focus Point

The best way to make your painting stand out is to make sure your audience sees what you want them to see. So one of the most important thing you can do is to establish a focus point. One painting can contain multiple focus points, so it is important to establish a flow that guides your audience through your painting.

A good flow can keep your audience looking at your painting for a few moments longer than they might have if you did not establish one. Tonal values in paintings are the most effective way to indicate focus points. Elements in the paintings such as rocks, rubble, trees, or machinery can also help establish a focus point, these techniques are also known as compositing. Let’s take a look at the following images, as an example.

In the first image, you can see how I have established top-down lighting onto the subject and used only one light source, the bright reflections on the helmet also help to bring out the focus point.

The second focus point would be the cigarette. Take note of how I helped accentuate the cigarette using the guns. All of this helps the viewer look at this painting from the top to  the bottom.

How to Create a Triangle Pixelation Effect in Photoshop

Photoshop makes it easy to pixelate with the mosaic filter but it’s boring and overused. Thankfully, there’s an easy trick that lets you pixelate using triangles instead of  squares!  This tutorial is  incredibly easy so give it a try.

Step 1

Start by opening any photo you want into Photoshop. You should resize the image  to your final output size before you continue. This is the photo that we’ll be using.

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Step 2

Duplicate your background layer twice.

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Step 3

Activate the Transform tool  (Ctrl/Cmd+T or Edit  > Free Transform)  then set the  horizontal skew value to 45º.  The horizontal skew setting is located in the options bar when you have your Transform tool activated. Press Enter to apply the transformation.

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Step 4

Go to Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic. Adjust the cell size setting to anything you like then click OK.

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Step 5

Next, we’re going to transform it the opposite way. Activate the Free Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd+T or Edit > Free Transform)  then set  the horizontal skew setting to  –45º. Press  enter to apply the transformation.

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Step 6

Set this layers opacity to 50% then select the middle layer. We’re going to be doing the same steps but with transformations done

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Step 7

With the middle layer selected, activate the Free Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd+T or Edit > Free Transform) then set the horizontal skew to –45º.

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Step 8

Apply the same mosaic filter again. You can do this quickly by pressing Ctrl/Cmd+F or by going into the filter menu and selecting the first filter in the menu. Photoshop automatically places your last used filter on the top of this menu.

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Step 9

Use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd+T or Edit > Free Transform) to transform the layer back to its original shape by setting the horizontal skew value to 45º.

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Step 10

We’re pretty much done but if you zoom, you can see that the edges don’t really line up. To fix this, press the left or right arrows on your keyboard to nudge the layer until the intersections align.

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Step 11

If you’ll be using  this as a background, you  might want  to  apply a faded/vintage film effect.  We used the Vesper effect from the Instagram Video Photoshop action and completed the look with some text using the Abolition font.