Another Photoshop tutorial because you guys asked for it! This time we are going to take a look at how to create realistic-looking smoke. Whether you use it to add that eery effect to a night-time scene, or to jazz up that photo that just looks too cool – you will find a dozen or so uses of this effect.

So let’s do it shall we…

1. As always, for the purposes of this demo, let’s go ahead and create a new document with canvas size 460×600 and black; #000000 as the background.

2. Create a new layer called “Smoke”. As always, you can achieve this in the Layer menu; ‘Layer > New > Layer’, or Shift+Control+N (Shift+Command+N on a Mac).

3. We are going to select a ‘Hard Round’ brush at about 20 pixels (which you can also select by right-clicking on the canvas with the brush selected and changing the settings. Make sure the brush is set at 100% opacity and obviously 100% hardness. Select white for the foreground colour; or #FFFFFF. Once we have these settings set-up we can roll ahead to step four!

4. Okay, as you can see in the image below, we are just going to create some ‘beanstalk’ style swirls or better yet; back to front question marks without the colon – on the canvas! Make sure to start from the left to the right. We are going to be reducing the size of the brush as we move from left to right; and the easiest way to explain this is to probably show you how it should look over a couple of screens. So here we go!

5. Okay, now that you have created the above brush patterns at different sizes, let’s create the magic. Let’s go to ‘Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur’ at 7 pixels radius. Here’s the screeny.

If you got it right it should be looking like this so far:

6. You might not have used the ‘Maximum’ and ‘Minimum’ effects before. These two effects, which can be found under ‘Filter > Other’, are useful for modifying masks.

The Maximum filter basically applies a choke to the layer; basically spreading out white areas and choking in black areas. Whereas, the Minimum filter has the effect of applying the direct opposite; a spread. It achieves this by spreading out black areas and consequently  shrinking white areas.

The great thing about the Maximum and Minimum filters is both effects look at individual pixels in a selection. As mentioned in Adobe’s documentation, ‘within a specified radius, the Maximum and Minimum filters replace the current pixel’s brightness value with the highest or lowest brightness value of the surrounding pixels.’ 

That’s just what we need for this effect! We want to basically ‘blend’ the pixel brightness values by going over the layer with a ‘Maximum’ pass – so let’s go ahead and do just that.

Head over to the ‘Filter > Other > Maximum’ filter and select a radius of 4 pixels. Notice how the higher up you go in radius, the less-realistic it starts to look.

7. Okay, if you managed to get that section okay, your canvas should start looking like this:

8. Alright, let’s add  a few more effects. Let’s go to ‘Filter > Distort > Spherize’ and select ‘-100%’, select okay, and then go to ‘Filter > Distort > Twirl’ and select a setting of ‘-75%’. Your canvas should now be looking like this:

9. Alright, we are almost there! Let’s setup a Surface Blur by going to ‘Filter > Blur > Surface Blur’ with the following settings:

10. Okay! We are pretty much done! Let’s find an interesting image to use as a backdrop. Through the magic of Stock Xchange, here’s one CraigPJ created earlier. [http://www.sxc.hu/photo/788512] 

Insert this image, or any other as a separate layer but make sure it is underneath the ‘smoke’ layer we have been working on.

There you go! Cool hah? Feel free to play around with the Smoke effect to get it looking a little better. Try duplicating the ‘smoke’ layer and playing with the opacity of that layer, or moving it around the canvas.

You can use the ‘Warp Tool’ to make the smoke move in a certain direction. Maybe something like this? [Click to maximise]

So here’s just one of the ways this effect can go in terms of Levels and Curves.

So there you go guys! Enjoy playing with this effect. There are many ways to create smoke in Photoshop, but this method usually gets you good results. Not only that, it gives you ample oppurtunity to experiment with not only the settings, but the post-production after the effect has been setup.

So once again, thank you for following – let us know what you think by posting a comment if you liked it or it helped you and share, share, share. Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates on future content (It’s free and easy!).

Till next time, Cheb 2.0.

Thank you all for the lovely comments and feedback I have been receiving! I thought I’d take a bit of a change from the normal tutorials and/or reference articles for one post and go through just some online (as well as offline) advertising I really like.
I hope that these ads will inspire you to create great designs or inspire you to think a little bit outside the box; because that is what makes them impressive to me. Not only that – but great web designers achieve design inspiration from the world around them, and more importantly, other great design; whether it’s a web page or billboard.

Online advertising as well as other forms are great for igniting that creative spark you may need to get you through those rough times!

Feel free to drop me a comment and let me know what you think of them or head over to Ads of the World for more.

Bandaid – Sweat Proof

Cheb’s thoughts: Awesome concept and art direction.

What is the ad trying to portray? That Bandaid’s are so sweat-proof that they are being used for a undercover bust!

Rating: 5/5

Bic Shaver

Cheb’s thoughts: This ad might not make sense to everyone, but regardless, still a memorable one! Great marketing ploy to connect two product segments.

What is the ad trying to portray? Bic make shavers, but they also make those notable Bic pens. Appearing as a ‘running gag’ over multiple pages, the man has suddenly looks ‘well shaven’!

Rating: 3.5/5 (Not everyone will get the ‘Bic also makes pens’ bit!)

Brisbane Council – Boy Meets Girl & Short Story

Cheb’s thoughts: The first one is a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ classic, followed by a ‘Lord of the Rings’ style ad. Great direction and Photoshop work but the idea is heavily overdone.

What is the ad trying to portray? If you worked for Brisbane Council you would actually have time to read the books/novels rather than having to hear the ‘two second’ intro, plot and conclusion in one.

Rating: 4/5

Comedy Central – The chair

Cheb’s thoughts: Another running gag, this one is a crowd-pleaser. Smart, easy on the eyes, and effective – it sells the Comedy Channel!

What is the ad trying to portray? This one is a funny one. The first page shows two pins on a chair; classic school-boy trick on a teacher! A few pages later, it get’s funnier, with the pins now spot-on where it is going to really hurt the person who is going to sit on the chair! – Hilarious to think about.

Basically, it is saying that there is funny, then there is funny! – I.e. Comedy Central funny!

Rating: 5/5

Ford Expedition – Rearview camera Kitten and Tricycle

Cheb’s thoughts: Another set from Ford. Great direction and even better retouching. I like!

What is the ad trying to portray? The rear view camera on the Ford Expedition is so good that small things like a cat or kitten, and a child on a tricycle are now huge comparatively.

Rating: 4.5/5 (Some people may think this is a little misleading!) [Note: I stress "some"]

Gardena – Quite Mower

Cheb’s thoughts: Cool, simple post-production work. Good use of white space.

What is the ad trying to portray? Gardena lawn mowers are so quiet that not only are they mowing the lawn, but they are also silencing the ‘lawn’ or the sound frequency, from higher to silent in the areas that are freshly cut!

Rating: 4/5

Nestle Kit-Kat – Have a break…

Cheb’s thoughts: Another great use of white space as well as needing to use nothing more visually than the product’s logotype/tag line and the product itself.

What is the ad trying to portray? Simple! a pair of Kit-Kat’s setup in the ‘Pause’ position, as you would normally see on a audio player, etc. It is simply saying pause your life, take a break, and have a Kit-Kat!

Rating: 5/5

Olympus Zoom – Koala (Australia)

Cheb’s thoughts: Great post-production and Photoshop work.

What is the ad trying to portray? Olympus binoculars and more importantly their zoom-factor is so good, that the object you are viewing; in this case a Koala will appear ‘right before your eyes’, or again, in this case, ON the binoculars! In this actual ad, it appears as though the Koala has been catapulted into tourist’s face!

Rating: 5/5

Pain without borders – Cambodia

Cheb’s thoughts: Great 3D rendering, animation, and post-production work

What is the ad trying to portray? Pain in Cambodia is a continuous cycle. There seems to always be grief and suffering and it is shown clearly by the revolving belt.

Rating: 5/5

Pedestrian Council of Australia – Don’t Speed

Cheb’s thoughts: Great concept, direction and implementation.

What is the ad trying to portray? Another simple one. The crossing itself has become the jail cell for the ‘purpotretor’ – who we can only imagine has ran over someone whilst speeding and as a result of his actions has been sentenced. This obviously is more of a concept rather than a real case – but is a reality of what is possible if you speed.

Great use of ambiance and everyday scenarios.

Rating: 5/5

Rolling Stone – Steve

Cheb’s thoughts: Cool idea. Simple, but unfortunately places a little too much emphasis on the object and not as much on the product itself.

What is the ad trying to portray? The masked-man in this ad, Steve, can now benefit from Rolling Stone’s guide to restaurants, cinemas, books, etc and does not have to waste time downloading at work’s expense!

Rating: 3.5/5

Surf -White Nurse

Cheb’s thoughts: Excellent direction! Love the nurse’s facial expression and the doctor’s looking so ‘deep in thought’ only adds realism.

What is the ad trying to portray? Surf leaves your whites looking so white that you can be used as a X-Ray light screen and save your hospital electricity bills! ;p

Rating: 5/5

Vegemite – Cricket car

Cheb’s thoughts: Finally, another nice ambient shot with great post-production and Photoshop effects to boot.

What is the ad trying to portray? Vegemite, an Australian icon, is known to have vitamins which support growth and strength. Obviously the ad is targeted for an Australian audience, and lovers of Cricket.

The ad is trying to say that the Australian side must have had thier Vegemite before the game, because they have so much strength that the shot flew out of the stadium; shown in the background!

Rating: 4.5/5

So there you go guys, another design inspiration post! Feel free to share this post with a friend and subscribe to our RSS feed for further posts.

Till next time, Cheb.

I’ve been playing with glow effects lately for an upcoming website redesign, and I’ve been noticing quite a bit of work being done with Photoshop’s pen tool and cool lighting effects, so I figured I’d share some introduction to the pen tool itself as well as a glow/lighting technique which can be used in many, many ways with you guys. Sit back, relax, and enjoy another Photoshop tutorial.

Just as a sneak peak, this is what we are going to be creating…

Okay, Let’s start from the top!

If you’ve never used the pen tool in Photoshop before, you are definitely missing out. The pen tool is great for working with vectors as well as creative bezier curves.

Considering the pen tool in itself is usually classed as a intermediate/advanced tool in Photoshop, we will just touch up on the basics so you can get going with this tutorial.

The Pen Tool

The Pen tool has the following five options:

1. The Pen tool is mostly likely going to be the main tool you use. The ‘Pen Tool’ allows you to create straight lines and curves that make up most your paths.
2. The Freeform Pen tool is designed to let you create paths quickly by just drawing freehand with the mouse. The main downside is that it’s hard to create accurate paths and especially curves due to the nature of drawing with a mouse.
3. The Add Anchor Point Tool allows you to insert additional anchor points into your path, basically splitting a line segment into two. This helps you when you have already started a curve but you want to convert this into a more complex shape.
4. The Delete Anchor Point Tool removes anchor points from your path. What happens as you remove an anchor point is that the anchors on either side of the removed anchor join up to form one longer line segment, as if you have just snapped them into a single line. This tool helps you when you have too many anchor points on your path.
5. The Convert Point Tool allows you to convert a smooth anchor point to a corner anchor point, and convert a corner anchor point into a smooth one.

Even though that was a gentle introduction to the pen tool; today, we will mainly work with the Pen tool itself – so create a new document, 460×460 and let’s go! Try to create the following easy curves and lines by following the simple steps.

If you can get these down-pat, it’ll make the next part easy as anything! NB: I have created a little compass to help you with the angles of the curves. :0) Good luck!

If you have made it this far, I’m assuming that you can now make a straight line, a simple curve, and take a curve a little bit further and create a wave of sorts! Well done..

Okay, let’s create a new document, 460×460 and set background colour to black, #000000. Before we get kicking, let’s make sure we have some settings where they need to be.

Firstly, when you click the pen tool or press P on your keyboard you should see the preceding options on the top of your screen. Make sure you select the second option of the three ‘squares’ – the ‘Paths’ option highlighted in green above. Then make sure that ‘Pen tool’ is selected, which should be on by default anyway. Finally, click on the down-ward arrow after the custom shape icon; the star-looking icon. This buttom (down-ward arrow) is tool settings, and as you can see there is a ‘Rubber Band’ option.

What’s the Rubber Band option for?

The Rubber Band option is used to help show you where the curve is heading and how it’s looking before you click to set it on the next segment or anchor. This is a good option for beginners because it helps to show you where the path will go next. The Rubber Band option might be hard to begin with, because even when you are done with a curve, the line just ‘follows’ you. Click escape, ESC, on your keyboard when you are done with a curve and that will get rid of the stalker!

Just a little tip – when you are done with paths and this effect, and you want to draw shapes, make sure you select the first of the three squares, or ‘Shape Layers’ and not ‘Paths’. Obviously we can keep ‘Paths’ on for now because we need this option.

So back to your 460×460 canvas with a black background.

Making sure to incorporate a new layer for each object, draw three objects on the canvas, separating them across the canvas if you can. We want to draw what we have just learnt; a straight line, a curve and a wave.

Don’t worry about the foreground colour for now because we will apply layer styles later to dress each one up. So obviously, create a new layer, call it ‘straight line’ or something, draw the straight line and then create a new layer for the curve, and another for the wave. If done right, you should see something like below.

If that’s what you see on your screen, well done! Let’s keep going.

Click the brush tool and select a soft round brush, 5 pixels in size – or if you have a later version of Photoshop, simply select the brush tool, (press B), and then right click on the canvas and change the ‘Master Diameter’ to 5px and leave hardness at 0% (obviously! it’s soft, right!). Select white, or #FFFFFF [thanks Hank!] for the foreground colour for now so we can straight away see a result, then click back into the pen tool.

This is the fun part! You might be wondering why we setup the brush? Well worry no longer, we are about to find out why!

[flashvideo filename="http://www.cheb.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/Untitled.flv" /]

Okay, let’s recap.

If you right click on the paths you should see a ‘Stroke Path’. What this will do is just what it says; Stroke the path you have made using the option you tell it to. Because we edited brush settings beforehand, we choose ‘Brush’ and make sure we keep ‘Simulate Pressure’ ticked. After that, you’ll want to right click again and ‘Delete Path’ because we now have a stroked layer in its place and don’t need the ‘guide’ anymore!

What exactly is simulate pressure?

Simulate pressure simply gives the curve a more realistic stroke. It does this by tapering-off the ends of the curve/line as if the pressure has started off light, and then eased-off on the end of the curve. Trust me, you want to keep this selected – it makes everything look much better!

Okay, if you followed the video, you should now have something like below.

Cool hah? Okay, let’s get some glowing happening.

If you apply the following Layer effects to your now-stroked paths, your glow should start forming.

When you select the above layer styles; if the paths are all on one layer (even though we talked about splitting them up before), as an example, should start looking something like this:

Cool hah?

Quick Tip 2.0

If you want to make your life easier, you can click the “New Style” button as seen in the above Layer style selection screens; immediatly under ‘Cancel’. This will let you clone all the settings that are open on the current Layer style screen to be used on another layer/path, etc. When you want to re-use the settings, go to: ‘Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options’, click on the ‘Styles’ tab, on top of ‘Drop Shadow’, and ‘Inner Shadow’, etc – and then select your new style from the list; press ‘OK’ and you’re done!

So there you go! Experiment with your curve, brush master diameter and type, and also your lighting (fill/layer effects) and you could come up with something like below…

So there you go people, hope you learnt something about the pen tool today and some effects you can create using stroke paths.

Enjoy and drop a comment if you liked the tutorial or you need something explained – or feel free to share it with your mates. Get on the RSS Feed to keep up to date about when I next post!

Thanks for reading, Cheb.