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Adobe Photoshop CC - Essentials Training

How to create smoke with an image inside it using Photoshop CC

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi there, this video is going to take brushes just that little bit further along, and we're going to use brushes as an actual mask to mask through this galaxy. Well, a little bit of realism with some black smoke. We're going to use cool Smoke Brushes like that. Let's learn how to install them and use them as a Mask in Photoshop. 
Let's open up our files, let's go to 'File', 'Open'. Let's go to our 'Exercise Files' in 'Brushes'. There's going to be two, there's going to be 'Brush 04' and 'Brush 05'. Open up both of those for me. So we've got our galaxy, and we've got our man sitting on the bench. So the difference between this one and the last one is, we're going to be using masks as well as the brushes. So first up we need to install our brushes. So with Photoshop open, go to your "Exercise Files'. In here there's one called 'Smoke Brush'. You can see it's a lot bigger in terms of file size. I'll double click it. Hopefully now, in your 'Window', under 'Brushes', you've got - I'm going to scroll up, twirl up, - Drips, and there's Smoke Brush, twirl them down. 
So those are the ones we're going to be using. So the way this works is, we're going to grab all of this. So 'Brush 05', grab our 'Move Tool.'. Click, hold, drag, drag. Holding down, let go. It's roughly the right size already so I don't need to transform it. That's going to work for me. What we want to do is, we're going to add a Layer Mask. We did this earlier on in the course. I'll show you kind of the basics first before we do the smoke. So I'm going to add a Layer Mask to it, and nothing happens. White shows everything through, so if I grab my 'Brush Tool', and I pick not the drippy brush, just the regular general brushes, I'll use this first one here. 
Remember we did the before and after, so black's my foreground color, and we kind of did that, we painted half of it in, and half of it out. So remember, black, when I'm painting on the Mask, hides things. I'm going to keep going until I've covered the whole thing. To bring it back I use the White Brush. So I can toggle these, and instead of using this big ugly brush, I'm going to use the Smoke Brush to bring it back, and that's the trick. So we're using the brush to paint on the Mask to show the galaxy through. I'm going to go to my Brushes Panel and I'm going to find my Smoke Brushes, and pick a starting one. This one here is probably the best one to get started with, '07'. 
The brushes will-- probably way too big. Click, click. It's way too big for what I want so I'm going to lower the size. Using white I'm making sure I'm working on my mask, not the image, working on this mask. And I'm just going to have a-- click once, it's not a very sophisticated tool. So if you do it twice they're going to start looking like they repeat. What I like to do is, under 'Brushes', there's 'Brush Settings'. It's just the icon above it. You can start messing around with the rotation. It just means, when you do it again it looks a little bit more random. If you've bought a brush or found a little bit more sophisticated one, you might find something a little bit better than the one that I found for free. 
Go back to 'Brushes', I'm going to find something else. I'll try this one here. It's going the wrong way. So in 'Brush Settings' again you can go through, and say 'Flip X' or 'Y', so it's coming out the other way. Now if it's got the target as well, it means that the brush is way too big, and you can't see it, so I'm going to use my square brackets to make it smaller. And there we go, wanted to kind of look like it's coming out of its head. That's kind of cool. 
My brushes, that one as well, too big. Use my square brackets next to my P key. I want a bit more of a filler in the middle here. So what I might do is actually just go back to a regular brush. So 'General', 'Soft Round'. Still using white, but I'm just going to fill in some of this kind of middle part, just to give it a bit of guts. Now it looks okay. What I want to do though is get a bit of an effect so it looks like-- that interaction here through his head is not great, just appears. So what I'm going to do is create a new layer, and just use a straight out black brush. Because it's a silhouette it's going to work. 
So 'Brush Tool', I'm going to go to my brushes. Not these general ones, my Smoke Brush, and just like before I'm going to find one that I like. Something a little bit different that I haven't used yet, I guess that one. And I'm not working on a mask this time. I'm actually just going to use a straight out black. So pick black for your foreground color. Pick an appropriate brush size. You'll see what I mean in a minute. I'm going to click on his head. I might turn down the opacity a little bit as well. Maybe coming out through a little strong. 
The brush there, I'm going to use a different one. Maybe this one. Yes, that's cool. 'Brush Settings', play with the 'Rotation'. Now I'm just messing about because that's the thing I wanted to do, right? I'm just now going to go through and see if I can make it look a little realistic, as the galaxy coming out of somebody's head would be. That's kind of what I was looking for, kind of. So we use the brush as a mask. We also used it just as a straight out brush. And because they're on their own lands, we can go through, and kind of either delete the mask and start again, or build it up or lower the opacity. And that is how to do the kind of smoke galaxy, coming out of my brain effect in Adobe Photoshop. Let's get into the next video.