Create a canvas with a black background and pick a soft edge brush with white as the foreground color and create a new layer.

On the new layer start painting random swirls, dont try to give it a particular shape, the more random it looks the better the final result!

If you want to get more variations on the shapes of your doodles just lower the opacity of your brush by 20-30% .

Next reach for your smudge tool and start dragging lines out from the core of the drawing you just created. Make sure that all the lines you paint begin from the centre as this will give your explosion a more radiating effect. Keep dragging lines with the smudge tool until you have created a halo around your initial drawing.

To prepare for the next step we will lock the Transparency of this layer. This will prevent color from spilling over the edges of the lines. Do this by clicking on the Lock button above the layers palette as shown below.

Next from the color palette set the foreground and background colors of the layer to red and yellow. You do not need to worry about the shade of the colors now as we will apply layers, just go for the basic shades.

The go to Filters->Render and click on the Clouds filter, this is what you should be looking at by now , well more or less…

Next change the colors of the layer to the default black and white and apply the Clouds Filter again, thats FIlters->Render->Clouds FIlter, this will eliminate all color from the image. Now go to Edit->Fade or simply hit Ctrl-Shift+F on your keyboard, that Ctrl-Command+F for Mac.This will bring forward the Fade dialogue, we will change the way the filter is applied from Normal to Linear Light.

Hit OK and this is the end result.

Now it may not say much on its own, but if you apply it on top of an image then the result is really impressive. And that is the coolest feature of this explosion effect that it is easy to create and as easy to customize it so it can be applied on almost all photos. So time for some creative chaos!

First, open up a new document and fill it with black as the background. This is important so make sure that the background color is black. Now, type in the text you wish to apply the tutorial to, we’ll use the text “Photoshop” as you can see below.

Now, flip the text 90 degrees CCW, you can do this by using the transform tool under ‘edit’. After this we’ll apply the wind filter, you can do this by going to Filter -> Stylize -> Wind, make sure to apply wind from right to left. Repeat this step 3 times.

Flip the text back using 90 CW (edit -> transform again) and add a gaussian blur filter (Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur -> 7 pixels). Now make a new layer (ctrl+shift+n) and go to Image -> Apply Image.

Now it’s time to utilize the first magic, go to Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation and make sure ‘colorize is selected’. Set the hue to 40 and the saturation to 100.

Duplicate this layer (ctrl+j) and go again to hue/saturation, this time set the hue to -40. Now set the layer on color doge and click ctrl+e which will merge down the layer.

After this we’ll use liquify which is placed under the filters menu, press “W”, select brush size 50, with a density of 40, you can keep the pressure at 100. We’re now going to use the dodge tool to create some cool flames by ‘dragging the wind up’. After you’ve added the first set to flames, lower the brush size to add more details to your flames, using the same technique.

After you’ve done this, type your text again, but this time in black - move your text ‘into’ your old text. Now duplicate layer 1 (the new layer, use ctrl+j again) and drag it above the other layers. Set it on screen and leave the opacity to 100%, both these things can be handled from inside the layers menu.

Now add a layer mask and take the gradient tool, take the linear gradient white to black and drag from top of the text to the bottom. After this, use the smudge tool at 60 pixels and drag over the black letters you don’t want to be black.

Create a new layer and go to Image -> Apply Image, set this new layer to screen and the opacity to 60%. On top of this we’ll use Gaussian Blur with the radius 50 pixels (Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur). Again, create a new layer and go to Image -> Apply Image. We’ll now make a new layer once again and go to Image -> Apply Image, important is to set the opacity of this layer to 50% this time, after this press ctrl+t.

After this, go to Edit -> Transform -> Perspective to create a shadow effect by mirroring the image, this will make the text float and look really cool!

Hopefully, if you’ve done all the steps right, you’ll have something like this on your screen.