In this tutorial we are going to see how we can add smoke to a picture.

We are gonna start off by adding a new layer to our picture and on this layer we are gonna render some clouds, white and black. Once you have chose these two colours we are going to Filter->Render->Clouds after you make sure that the new layer you just created is selected.

By doing this we have create some clouds. By double clicking on the layer we are gonna bring up the blending options window.

We are gonna work with the sliders on the bottom right of our window. By clicking on the “This Layer” slider and holding Alt pressed you will notice that the pointer breaks into two sliders. If you move the right half slider to the right you will fade out the clouds creating soft looking fading edges on top of your original photo.

Drag the slider up to the half of your bar until it looks good and then click ok!

Tip! Fine tune your smoke by bringing the opacity down. Again make sure you have the smoke layer selected.

For the parts we don’t want too much smoke we are gonna blend the smoke out instead of deleting it because that is gonna give us rough edges and an unnatural look.

To do this we are switching to quick mask mode that lies at the bottom left side of our photoshop interface, and with the quick mask mode selected we are gonna draw a black to white gradient by using the gradient tool.

By dragging and dropping from the bottom to the almost up to the middle of our picture you should be looking at this picture. By clicking on the regular mode and hitting ctrl+shift+I we are essentially choosing the exact same area on our picture but without the redish effect. Now our selection has a soft edge and by cutting the selected area and ctrl+D to deselect we are achieving a smooth edge effect on our smoke.

And with this tutorial we learnt how to create some smoke on Photoshop!

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