1. Open a new image on a transparent background. Make a new layer and select the "Polygonal lasso tool" and create an abstract shape. Paint it in a medium to light shade (doesn't have to be grey)



2. Select the "Dodge" tool and change the "Range" to "highlights." Use this tool around the edges and corners of your shape.




3. Select the "Burn tool" and use it wherever you think. You should have something that looks like this:



4. Go to Filter--->Distort--->Wave and leave the settings as follows:

- Generators "5"
- Wavelength "10"/"120"
- Amplitude "5"/"35"
- Scale at "100%" for both.
Click Randomise until you get something like this:



5. After using the wave filter go to Edit--->Fade-Wave and set the opacity to 50%.

Repeat this distort and fade until you think it looks like smoke. Save as a .png or .psd.



6. copy and paste onto your image or adjust the colour and overlay etc


Practicing the shapes and distort and fade can improve the finished image.

Absolutelly excelent tip. Thanks.

Thanks for that faerie..I can now make my "smoking allowed in here".. sign for my kitchen..

That's nice tip ma'am. Thanks :) I haven't found a brush like this.

Excellent tip thank you.

nice tut fae , thanks i will give it ago . I need all the help i can get

this is most helpful and excellent !

thank you !

A very cool tip.

Dont know how I missed this Faerie!! Now if I could find a good way to animate it Id be well chuffed!

glad you have found it useful.

I'm sure you'll have no problems animating smoke uj

Its hard to get a real imitation, Ive tried n tried!

I dunno ^^^ 3000 or 4000 frames should do it..

that's nothing to uj...looking forward to 1Gb animations

LOL those were the days eh

that's a great tip faerie, I may use it sometime

UJ I animated the smoke in this smiley from this -> to this ->

oh and fixed it for dark backgrounds (I hate that... the cigarette is black cause it's expecting the white background to fill it in... sloppy work if you ask me )
but that's dealing with near single pixels... not realistic smoke... good luck with THAT!!! lol

That is clever Faerie. I've just D/L photoshop so as about a novice as you can get. I'm just going to install it so im looking forward to trying to master it.
No doubt i'll be pulling my hair out but i like learning.

Jason and Back1Ply

I'm still a novice with Photoshop, Rocco, and am still learning what it can do.
When you have looked over the program settings the best thing to do is take a look at some tutorials and post your results in Creative Souls for the gfx artists to comment on

I used a few grey/white layers and did a lot of smudging (if I remember correctly) to make Simm's sig:

Thanks Faerie I'll be having a look at it all next week so will do like you say and look at some of the tutorials, I'll need all the help i can get,lol

Thanks again.

thanks for the tut fae!

Sweet tip! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

thanks bro..,

Thanks a lot fae, always wondered how to do this

awesome tut !! :)

Wow great tutorial I never knew how easy it is to make smoke until now.