How to Create Smoke Effects in Photoshop

There may be many occasions when you might want to add smoke to an image. But how to do it? It is actually fairly easy. First, open the image in Photoshop you want to add smoke to. Then go over to the bottom of the layers panel, and create a new layer above the image layer.

Make sure that your foreground color is set to the default black and your background color to the default white. Do this by going down to the bottom of the tools panel and clicking on the default black and white icon, or simply hit the d key on the keyboard. Now, go to the filter menu and choose Render/Clouds from the menu. Hold down the alt key if you want the clouds filter to have more contrast. Each time you go through this process, you will find that your clouds will look a little different, but they should cover the entire image layer.

Now you should go to the layers palette and click and hold down Add New Style. Then, from the popup menu, choose Blending Options. The Layer Styles dialog will popup. There are two controls down at the bottom of the Layer Styles window. Adjust the top slider until all the black in the clouds layer completely vanishes. Now you should hold down the alt key and click near the little left triangle in the top slider. This should cause the triangle to spate in two. Move the right part of the triangle to the right.

If you have followed the above instructions, you have now got big white clouds of smoke. That is not quite what we are looking for, so let's refine them a bit. The next thing at this stage is to lower the cloud layer's opacity just a bit. I suggest to about 20%.

Next you will probably want to get rid of some of those clouds of smoke. Go to the layers panel and add a mask to your clouds layer, by clicking the mask icon at the bottom of the panel. Make certain you are working on the mask and not the actual clouds. Now get a brush, again making sure your foreground color is black and start simply painting away parts of the smoke you don't want. When you get rid of all the extra smoke you don't need, you should have a natural looking smoke.