How to make exploding shoe effect in Adobe Photoshop

This video we are going to do a similar technique. Pixel explosion decay dispersion map, but we're doing it with a shoe. We're going to learn a few extra tricks, on top of what we learned in the last one. Basically kind of doubling back on itself and removing the shoe completely from the background, so we can make it look realistic. As realistic as an exploding shoe is. Let's jump in now and learn how to do it. 

Let's open up our 'Decay 2' from 'Visual Styles'. Here it is here. It's kind of two things I want to do. I guess we're just taking what we did in the last video just a little bit further, to cover some of the issues you might run into. First of all, I want this kind of exploding out the back of the shoe. There's not enough room here, so we're going to use our Crop Tool, but what we're going to do is turn on Content Aware, so that when it does generate more background, kind of over here - Hit 'Return' - it's going to invent it, which is quite cool, because there's kind of a subtle gradient in the background here. 

The other thing I want to do is, let's mask this out and remove it from the background, because it kind of, maybe on the video, doesn't look like, but there is a gradient here, right? If I copy and paste this, you can see it's actually-- you know it's not the same color all the way through the background. So let's select the shoe. I'm just going to use the 'Quick Selection Tool', and just go around. I'm going to be a little bit more careful in this one, not a huge amount. So what I'll do is speed this up while I go around, and add and remove selections. 

So I've got a selection. Let's do a couple of things. Let's duplicate this layer a couple of times. So I'm going to right click it, and say 'Duplicate'. So we're going to have three, we're going to have the shoe by itself, we'll duplicate it again, and we'll have another one that is going to be the, we'll have the explosion layer. Set Explosion, that will do. And this layer is now going to be the background. So a couple of things I want to do. Shoe layer, just turn them all off but this guy. And let's just mask him so he's on his own little chunk. I want to grab that selection again. So hold down the 'Command' key on a Mac, 'Ctrl' key on a PC, and grab the background and turn this off. And what I'd like to do is I like to remove the shoe from the background, so there's nothing behind it. 

So Content Aware Fill will work but my selections are not perfect, so it will end up with a ghost around the outside. Let's just have a quick little look. 'Content Aware Fill', and it's going to do okay, because he's like a little ghosting around the outside. So before you do that let's just go to 'Select', 'Modify', and go to 'Expand'. How far out? 30 pixels, that will do. Now if we go 'Edit', 'Fill', 'Content Aware Fill', it's all up there. And there's still like a little bits, I'm going to go even bigger. 'Select', 'Modify', I'm going to 'Expand' again. So I've actually gone 60, 30+30, 60. Fill. Deselect. Nice. So when you're doing it, expand it to 60. 

So go to the background, I've got this guy on his own layer by himself. Now the Explosion Layer is the liquify thing again. So let's grab this selection, let's mask it out. Let's apply this Layer Mask. We don't really need to do it for this one, because the background's so kind of, I guess, simple, but let's do it out of habit, it's not going to hurt it. But it means that if you're doing something with a really complex background you'll have to do this step. Let's turn these guys off just so we can work on the Explosion Layer. Let's go to 'Filter', 'Liquify'. This one's going to be a little easier. What kind of explosion direction do I want? Probably not going to mess too much with the back of the shoe, or the graphics. I just want to go like this. Can't help myself making noises. Helps the explosion get in the mood. 

I'm actually going to go this way as well, even though I want my explosion going back there. I found in the last exercise, I want it just a little bit on the sides. Now let's go all the way to the back, we've come this far, let's click 'OK'. So we've got our big kind of explosion, let's mask it. Remember, if we hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, and click 'Layer Mask', or 'Alt' key on a PC, we get a nice big black mask. Let's turn all these other guys on. 

The difference between this and the last one is, the last one, we just jumped into, straight kind of adding the blast in here, which is cool. What we're going to do is, because we've got this shoe on its own layer, what we can do is click on the 'Shoe Mask', go to one of my brushes, I'm going to grab the Explosion Brushes that we downloaded in the last tutorial. Grab some of this. See how big it is. Perfect. Rotation. And I'm just going to paint some of it out. See what we're doing here, like instead of it just exploding out, it's kind of an area where there's a bit of both. Let's paint it back out. Let's get you going. Let's work on this layer here, let's make sure white is the foreground. White is my foreground color and now I'm going to paint it back in. 

So let's grab our 'Brush Tool'. There's so much trial and error in this particular technique. I've taught it loads of times, and 60% of the time I'm like, "Man, that was cool." And then the other foot, I see, and I'm like, "I'm going to start again." What do I want? I'm kind of liking that, well, far too much in there. I'll pick a really big brush and stay out this way. That's kind of what I'm looking for. I'm probably less happy with that liquify now, because it's kind of going up and looping around. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to work on this Liquify Layer, go back into 'Filter', 'Liquify'. I'm just going to kind of straighten it out. By straighten it, I mean I just want kind of like cool whoops going, that's kind of the look I'm going for. There we go. Click 'OK'. I'm happy enough with that. Click on the 'Mask'. Paint stuff in. I'm going to turn this around. Paint with black, paint it back out. Maybe a smaller paintbrush. And there's going to be lots of this. I'm just going to fast forward, painting back in, painting back out again to try and find my happy medium. I'll see you when I'm finished. 

All right, we're back. I'm not happy with how it's going. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just start again. So I am going to have my 'Mask' selected, have black as a foreground color, and just hold down the 'Option-Back space' key on my Mac, or the 'Alt-Back space' key on a PC, and just start again. Don't be afraid to do it See that, that's the one that goes too far. I don't like all those little bits there. I like the specs in there, so I like the end of this brush but not all of it. So I'm going to go for something a little bit more subtle. 

Let's pick a brush, let's go for another exploding one. Let's rotate it around. Maybe big. Here we go, that's kind of more what I'm looking for. And that is something I am 50% happy with, a lot more subtle. I'm going to add a couple of the Depth of Field brush. So I'm just going to grab, I think I want some of the pink. Make a nice big brush. Even bigger brush. Just kind of have some of this coming out, so instead of using the Liquify, I'm just actually painting it straight on, it's a little bit of that. I'll make another layer here. A little bit of blue. Here we go. And I'm going to convert both of these to Smart Objects. Smart Objects, Smart Objects, so we can apply, 'Filter', 'Gallery', 'Gaussian Blur'. Just a mix, feel like they're out of focus. You do the same with the blue one but maybe not as much. 'Blur', 'Gaussian'. Because it's a Smart Object, you can double click the word 'Gaussian Blur' later on and go in and change it. All right. Move it around. 

All right my friends, that is the second version. We've done the dancer, now we've done the shoe. There's a lot more artistic license in this one here, deciding what you want, Working with the brushes, and don't be afraid just to start again. Let's get into the next video.