Disclaimer: Please note that this tutorial
requires the use of a filter only present in Photoshop CS (or later).
If you don't have a modern version of Photoshop, you may have to
improvise a little, or find a custom plugin to get a similar effect.
Ever since we first learned how to make it in the stone age,
mankind has had a profound fascination with fire. Directly or
indirectly
it warms our houses, cooks our food, and lights our footpaths at night.
Now you too can set Photoshop ablaze with the power and beauty of fire
by
following this animated 9 step tutorial. Just remember to play safely,
and
not singe your fingers!
Step 1:
Create a new document of any size, but try to begin with a canvas
slightly larger than you actually need. For example: if you need a fire
of 200
by 200px, start off with a 300 by 300px canvas.
Lets get started.
Set your foreground to
#414141 and background to a solid
white (#FFFFFF).
Then select Filter > Render > Clouds from the main menu.
Now go to
Filter > Render > Fibersand enter these
settings:
Variance:
17.0,
Strength: 4.0
You should end up with an image that resembles the one on the left.
Step 2:
Now duplicate this layer, reselect your original layer and
press 'CTRL+U'. Tick colorize and enter these
settings:
Hue:
0,
Saturation: +80,
Lightness: +10
And for the duplicated layer we do the same, but with these settings:
Hue:
+50,
Saturation: +90, Lightness: 0
Duplicate the yellow layer and set its layer blending mode to
Linear
Burn. Reselect the original yellow layer and change its blending
mode to lighten at 70% opacity. Flatten/Merge all
layers.
Step 3: Run Filter > Distort >
Shear
with the settings shown on the left (but don't be afraid to play with
these settings a little).
Then apply a motion blur with the angle set to 90 and the distance
set to 15px.
Step 4:
Now we can start preparing the fire for animation. Drag a
horizontal guide to the exact
centre of your canvas and select the top half of your canvas.
Right-click on your layer in the layer palette and choose 'Layer via
cut'. Drag the top half of your image to the bottom and the bottom
half to the top. It should look like the image on the left.
Step 5:
Here comes the difficult part of the tutorial that requires some
judgement from your side. We are gonna try to blend the two
halves into each other. There are several ways to do this, so pick the
one
that works best for you. This is the method I used:
First, grab your
Eraser
Tool
and change the setting to a Soft Brush about 100px in size. Then
position the brush
in a similar position to the example on the left. As you see, I went on
and erased a part of my bottom half and I have positioned my
eraser to do the top half. Just press and hold shift to erase a nice
straight line. Pass your
eraser about four times over the entire width of the canvas.
Step 6:
After you finished smoothing the edges, nudge up the bottom half
upwards until you
no longer notice the transition from the top half to the bottom half
(if you followed my instructions carefully,
this should be 50px upwards). As you can now plainly see,
the image is a little smaller than the one we started using in step 1,
and
that's why I recommended you started with a larger canvas than you
initially needed.
It should now resemble the image opposite.
Step 7:
Now just merge the two layers, CTRL+click the layer in
the layer palette,
and Image > Crop.
Duplicate this layer and position it directly
below the the other one so that it is off your canvas. See the image on
the left for a quick
animated explanation.
Step 8: Now
on to the animation. Press 'CTRL+SHIFT+M' to switch to
ImageReady(IR). Once in IR make sure your two layers are still linked.
Take a look at your animation palette (if it's not open,
click on Window > Animation) and add a new frame at the end.
Select the last frame and drag your layers up till one of the layers
disappears from your canvas and the other shows up. Then select both
frames in your animation palette and click the 'Tween' icon.
Add 15 frames and click OK. We're almost finished...
Now just remove the last frame and you have a seamless looping
fire effect.
Step 9:
Well, that's it for the fire! Feel free to add a layer on top
with a
few transparent areas if you want a cool flaming text effect. I hope
you learned a lot from this tutorial and
now know how create your own animated fire effects. For a little fun,
experiment with different
colours and speeds for the fire. If you have any questions just register at the
forums and post them there. I'm sure that a lot of guys (and gals) can
help you with your problems.