Smoke Photography Tutorial...

Just making my first gel holder today!! Thanks again for the tut!

You're welcome.

thanks for the help xD.
you make me jealous

You're welcome, but it's nothing to be jealous about. Not only is it easy to do, if you spend as much time doing it as I do sooner or later you get a few decent shots.

Thank you for sharing (saw your link in the Mustangs topic) your very creative images and how you did it!

Thanks. How'd you like the mustang shots?

Dude! Thanks so much for sharing this! It'll definitely be an awesome way to fill rainy afternoons. I was playing around with it tonight...here's a few that I got...I can see what you mean about it becoming addicting.

Those are great shots!!

Additional info...


Some new things I've taught myself for doing the smoke art images...


I was copying the single smoke shot and then pasting it onto a blank canvas, then pasting it as a floating selection. As a floating selection I'd flip or mirror it, then move it to join with the other pieces. It comes out great that way but can sometimes be a huge pain in the ass lining everything up so the seams don't show.

Now what I do, which can be seen with the recent addition to the smoke dumping thread, is to work with layers and change the properties to "Multiply". All I have to do is enlarge the canvas, then copy the entire image. Paste it as a new layer and flip or mirror that layer, then change that layer to "Multiply". To get the image to be square I just double the dimensions of the original shot when I enlarge the canvas. With PSPX2 when you enlarge the canvas you have the choice to put the original image in any of multiple positions: center, upper left, lower right, etc..


I pick a shot, then enlarge the canvas. Depending on what I want the shot to look like I put the original in the position I want it in when I enlarge the canvas. Then I copy the image...


1

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/katodog/6157183​926/

Nice post, this is great! I haven't worked with any of my smoke photos like this yet, but would like to try it. How do you think this method would translate to PS5?

It's roughly the same, but not. I will work on a Photoshop tutorial for the smoke art, it's easy to do if you know what you're looking for, but it's hard to do if you aren't used to doing some of the "advanced" things.


As a start what you can do is take your initial smoke shot and invert it to a white background. What that does is allows you to see what you're working on, if you leave it black when you "multiply" the layers everything is going to get darker and you won't be able to see what you're doing. Depending on how big the smoke shot is you might want to resize by 50% because once you start doing the "art" images they get really big really fast.

Enlarge the canvas by 100% both height and width, and click one of the placement arrows to put the smoke where you want it. After that it's basic to duplicate the layer, flip or mirror it, then "multiply" and merge. If you want to do the stuff where it's ending up like a circle full of details then you have to start getting into "Transform" and the different adjustments within that. Otherwise if you try to flip, mirror, or rotate, you're going to do it to all layers and not just the single layer you want to work with.

katodog wrote in post #13128175
It's roughly the same, but not. I will work on a Photoshop tutorial for the smoke art, it's easy to do if you know what you're looking for, but it's hard to do if you aren't used to doing some of the "advanced" things.

As a start what you can do is take your initial smoke shot and invert it to a white background. What that does is allows you to see what you're working on, if you leave it black when you "multiply" the layers everything is going to get darker and you won't be able to see what you're doing. Depending on how big the smoke shot is you might want to resize by 50% because once you start doing the "art" images they get really big really fast.

Enlarge the canvas by 100% both height and width, and click one of the placement arrows to put the smoke where you want it. After that it's basic to duplicate the layer, flip or mirror it, then "multiply" and merge. If you want to do the stuff where it's ending up like a circle full of details then you have to start getting into "Transform" and the different adjustments within that. Otherwise if you try to flip, mirror, or rotate, you're going to do it to all layers and not just the single layer you want to work with.

Alright that's some good into to get me started. I'll have to fireup PS and find some good smoke candidates to start messing around. Thanks!

Basic Photoshop steps to make the "art" images. I'm sure there's different techniques but this is what I'd do if I used Photoshop...


First pick a finished smoke image and invert it to a white background in necessary. The reason for this is that if you work with a black background when you change layer properties to “Multiply” you eventually won’t be able to see what the heck you’re doing. It’s much, much easier to work with a white background, and when you get done if you want black simply invert.

Awesome! I'll have to try this in the next couple of days and I'll let you know how well the info plugs in. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
BZ

You're welcome