Smokin’ Man

Posted by Anastasija in Photoshop Tutorials on 07 21st, 2008 | no responses

In this tutorial, I’m going to show how to create one smokin’ woman using a couple source pics, and just a few of the features associated with Phoenix.
So follow along and I’ll try to share a few secrets into some of the magic, without the smoke and mirrors.
Well, maybe a little smoke.
smokinwoman Smokin Man

With the general idea already in my mind, I needed to find a suitable background image.
The image I found turned out perfect because of the line of direction of the main figure’s vision. He’s looking directly where we’re going to place our smoke, creating unity among our elements. How convenient!
smoke01 Smokin Man

1. The first step was to remove most of the smoke from the original image, as we’ll be bringing in our own later on.
I did this simply by taking the Clone stamp tool, shift-clicking a clean area of the background to sample, and painting over the smoke covered areas with our selected sample.
smoke02 Smokin Man
It doesn’t need to be perfect at this point, as most of it will be covered by the end anyways.

2. Next, I brought in a high contrast image of a model. Not only do the natural stark shadows and highlights of this image look good, but hey, the contrast will do half the work for us in the long run.
Using a combination of the Move and Distortion tools, I resized and situated the model right where we want her.
Then set the layer’s blend mode to “Screen”.
smoke03 Smokin Man

3. Now that we have our basic composition in place, it’s time to get to the real action.
Using the liquify tool, I smudged the edges of the figure and pulled out trails to draw a smokey effect.
I did that until I was left with a wispy looking figure.
And remember, the more work you do in this stage, the less time it’ll take to cover your overlooked areas later on.
smoke04 Smokin Man

It’s almost good to go just as is, if I do say so myself.
But since we saved time by finding excellent source pics to begin with, let’s spend our free time fine tuning this thing up.

4. Our lady could always be more smokin’. And what’s more smokin’ than, well, smoke?
Using the Lasso tool, I copied and pasted a segment from an image of actual smoke onto a new layer.
smoke05 Smokin Man
I set this layer to “Screen”, just as we did with the woman. Using the Move tool, I resized the piece to situate around our lady friend.
I repeated that step numerous times until our lady was covered entirely hiding my earlier (now hideous in comparison) attempts to freehand the smoke entirely.
smoke06 Smokin Man

5. Now we’re getting somewhere! But I still wanted to expose a few of the highlights of the smoke a bit more. Just to give it that extra pop.
I did this by using a white brush to paint a rough outline around the figure on a new layer, then set this layer to “Overlay”.
smoke07 Smokin Man

6. Then, as a final touch, I filled the entire image in a light blue on a new layer, then set this layer to “Overlay”, and set the opacity to 25%.
Of course, this step is not 100% necessary, but it adds a little extra mood and brings the whole image together harmoniously.
smoke08 Smokin Man