How to make abstract smoke

By Mihai Opariuc on December 6th 2008

Hello and welcome to our 10th tutorial on AREA 1!

Today we’ll be learning about how to make abstract smoke in Adobe Photoshop.

Here’s what we are going to make:

So let’s get to work!

First, lets take our smoke image. I used this image.
See Screenshot 1.

Open it in Adobe Photoshop and go to Image > Adjustments > Invert or press CTRL + I.

Now go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. There are 3 settings: a black point slider on the left, a grey point slider in the middle and a white slider on the right. You will be able to see the histogram change as you make these adjustments. Now try to bring the best contrast out of your image. See Screenshot 2.

Now select your image layer and go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp mask.
See Screenshot 3.

Go to Layer > New > Layer and set the blending mode to Color and you can set the Opacity lower if you want.
See Screenshot 4.
Choose a brush with smooth edges and start colouring the smoke until you are satisfied.
See Screenshot 5.

That’s it!

Here’s my final result: Screenshot 6.

Hope you’ll enjoy this tutorial! Please leave a comment & thanks for the visit.

You can discuss this tutorial on the forum, click HERE.

Author: Mihai Opariuc - E-mail

My name is Opariuc Mihai, I'm a graphic/web designer from Ploiesti, Romania and I'm the owner of AREA 1. I hope we can share a lot of information, tips&tricks and ideas through this website. Follow me on Twitter @area1.

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3 Responses to “How to make abstract smoke”

Susan says:

February 3, 2009 at 11:52 pm

I have been looking for a tutorial on how to make abstract smoke brushes in Photoshop. I didn’t realize that these images were made from photos of smoke (similar to how a cloud brush is made).

Do you have any suggestions on how to take the smoke photos to use? I want to make some of these smoke brushes for my website and need to make sure I don’t violate any copyrights. Thanks.

And thanks again for the tutorial.
Stan says:

February 12, 2009 at 6:19 pm

Really good tutorial if you ask me, thanks a lot
sedFEIS says:

February 12, 2009 at 11:26 pm

Thanks for the comment