Creating Smoke In Photoshop From Scratch

Using Photoshop and a specific technique, it’s rather easy to create something that looks like smoke or fog—from scratch. It’s not as good as actual smoke photographed on a black background, but it’s much easier to come by. Here’s the trick…

Doodle

Draw a doodle. Preferrably keep the doodle in its own layer with a black background beneath.

Distort

Use the Liquify tool to distort the doodle. Liquify resides in the Filter > Liquify... menu. Using the various “forward warp”, “twirl” and “pucker” tools residing in the menu to the left, you distort the doodle as if you were fingerpainting.

Once you’ve applied the liquify transformation, select Edit > Fade Liquify... . In the dialog box that appears, set the opacity to 50% and apply.

Repeat

Now repeat the process until you’re satisfied:

Liquify Fade Liquify to 50%













If you enjoyed this tutorial, you might also enjoy my Creating Microworlds in Photoshop tutorial.