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All Arenas \ Photo Effects \ Photo Effects Advanced
Jopsa said 9 years ago 10/21/2002 4:38:42 PM EDT

First of all, you need this stuff:

  • Photoshop
  • Source Pics (I usually get mine from Google Image Search, but there are quite a few others that are quite good. Ditto, for example.)


    For this picture you will need these source pics:
  • A candle
  • Some smoke (Invite your friends around and START SMOKING :-D)
  • Some sort of background, a dark room preferably.
  • Someones photograph (I used myself)


Now youve got all that stuff, start photoshopping! :-)

Jopsa said 9 years ago 10/21/2002 4:38:42 PM EDT

Put all your source images on different layers, and lower the opacity of the face and of the smoke source pic down to about 30%.



As you can see, the first layer is called smoke. Thats actually where you will be working on, so create a new layer and put it on at the top.

You will basically use the rubber stamp, getting some smoke from your source pic and putting it on your smoke layer.

Jopsa said 9 years ago 10/21/2002 4:38:42 PM EDT

Keep the smoke source pic invisible until you need it to get some more smoke. The face should be kept visible at all times, so you can place use the smoke as a template, placing the smoke where you think smoke should go, if by some chance you happened to meet a ghost with a tendency to go under burnt-out candles.



I had some problems with the nose and the mouth, but here are some tips:


  • Start off with a big brush, just putting smoke basically where it should go. Bother with details later.
  • Remember smoke doesnt just *finish*, make it fade slowly away.
  • Even if normal smoke didnt do this, its important that you make the nose and mouth somehow whiter than the rest, so it looks like a nose and mouth.

Jopsa said 9 years ago 10/21/2002 4:38:42 PM EDT

Wherever you think you might need it, make your brush smaller and add some touches, like making the smoke dissolve into the air, etc...

Its also important that, from time to time you un-zoom a bit and take a good look from a distance. If it doesnt look real, keep on cloning!



If you dont want your background to get in the way, you can always insert a completely-black background, which is shown on the picture above. Actually, I was going to leave a black background before I found the dark-room one...

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