Quick Flames
Flame effect tutorials abound on the internet, but most of
them are quite fiddly, complex, take forever, and/or are
ideally optimized for text. You can, however, break the
mould with this simple tutorial that takes under 10 minutes
to complete and can be applied to anything. And hey... the
results look pretty darned realistic too!
Step 1: Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size
and/or format. In this example I have chosen a scene from
the rather addictive physics-based mini-game, Truck
Dismount.
Step 2: Create a new layer on top of your background stock
layer, make it active in the layers palette, rename it 'flames'
and, using a soft appropriately-sized tip on the Brush Tool,
paint a solid white color over the general area that you want
to be on fire. You don't need to spend too long at this stage,
as you will be altering this layer greatly in the next step.
Step 3: Now to add some shape to our fire! Using your
favourite smudge tool (mine is Oil Medium wet flow, as
found near the bottom of the smudge brush tip list) smudge
your fire up and give it a little squiggle as you go. Do this
until you get the proper shape. Also, ensure that the smudge
strength is set to 75%. Take your time at this stage and you
should eventually end up with something that resembles my
image on the left.
Step 4: Time to add a little color! Select Layer > New
Adjustment Layer > Color Balance from the main menu
and duplicate these settings in the dialog box:
Select the Highlights radio button (its towards the bottom
of the window, in the Tone Balance section) and, whilst it
is selected, push the Red slider to it's highest setting, adding
a little Yellow for better color balance. Repeat this
procedure, but the Shadows radio button highlighted
instead, and dragging the Yellow all the way to the left.
With the midtones, just drag the Red all the way to the right
and leave the Yellow alone. You should now have an image
resembling my example on the left.
Step 5: We don't, of course, want the whole picture to be
red, so we can fix this by holding down CTRL on the
keyboard and left-clicking the little thumbnail to the left of
the flames layer with the mouse. This will select
everything in the layer. After doing this, just reverse the
selection with Select > Inverse from the main menu, select
the adjustment layer in the layers palette, and Edit > Fill
your selection with a solid black color. Lose your selection
and Viola - You now have some awesome and easily
created fire!
This tutorial was written by Andantonius, if you have any
questions or comments feel free to contact him via the
BioRUST forums, where you can e-mail or send him a
private message.