Hey everyone Brady from texturelabs.org here
and today I’m going to run through a tutorial on this crazy magical smoke text effect in Photoshop
It’s a method I came up with when I was working on some of the marketing for this
movie called Pan, ya that's the one and this look actually never made it anywhere
but I held on to it because I just think its a really cool technique
so I’m happy to share it with you guys. Anyways, this looks pretty insane but it’s
probably not built the way you might think, there’s no painting involved at all. Just some really interesting things going
on with layers styles and blending modes, so let’s jump into it. Alright I’ve got a new document going here
and I already have just two things in here. I’ve got a black background and a layer
of live type which is white. This is a font called Tondu, and I’ll include
a link to that. This document, by the way, is HD resolution
1920 x 1080. This will work at higher resolution, but I’ll
just keep it simple. I’m going to start by bringing a texture
in here - this is Texturelabs Atmosphere 195, I’ll also include a link to this below. Kind of a cool wispy smoke. So I’m going to select all and make a copy
of that. Then back in the main document, I’ll paste
it in over the background. And I’m going to do a quick transform and
just scale that down to be about the width of my canvas. And I will rename that one “smoke”. Ok, so this smoke texture is going to kind
of drive the whole look. We’re going to do some interesting things
with it. I’m first I’m going to use this texture
to displace the edges of the type. So generally you might use the displace filter
for that, but I’m going to use kind of a weird method that keeps everything live. I’ll start by selecting this text layer,
and in the effects menu down here, I’m going to apply the stroke effect. And in stroke, I’ll reset to defaults, then
I’m going to change the fill type to gradient and I’ll bring the size way up to about
150. I’ll change the position to center. And then here in the gradient style I’m
going to set this to shape burst. It’s almost like it makes the type super
blurry right? Which seems totally useless, but just hold
on. I’m going to hit ok, and then I’m going
to drag that text layer into it’s own group, which will kind of isolate that stroke effect. Alright next I’m going to want a copy of
this smoke texture, so I’m going to hold the option key then click and drag a copy
of this smoke texture to the top. Not into that folder, but right on top of
it. And I’m going to apply one filter to this
smoke. It’s all the way down in filter, other,
and it’s this one called high pass. And this can be a useful filter. With it, you can eliminate the big variations
in dark and light across an entire image and just focus in on the smaller details. So if I set this to about 30, that leaves
me with just those nice swirls, but they’re very evenly distributed across this texture. So ok. Then I’m going to hold the option key and
click in between that smoke texture and the group folder to create a clipping mask, and
place that texture just within the shapes of those letters. And here’s the key to the whole thing. I’m going to change the blending mode on
that texture to hard mix. And look at that. It ends up creating all this displacement
based on the smoke texture. I’m going to do one thing. I’m going to bring the fill of that layer
down just a touch to 95%. And that will make that edge a little bit
softer and more natural. And check this out. If I open that folder and double click on
the stroke effect, I can change the size of this stroke effect and control how crazy those
edges get. I’m going to leave that at about 150. And I can also experiment with these edges
by selecting this texture and I can move it around or I can invert it with command I And
inverting it kind of distorts things in the other direction, and I actually kind ok like
that a little bit better. Then to make this white and transparent rather
than white and black, I’m going right click on the group folder and go to the blending
options of the group. And here, I’ll hold the option key and holding
option is kind of crucial here. Holding option, I’ll drag the “this layer”
black slider all the way to the top, making the black areas transparent. OK. So moving along. Next I’m going to take these two pieces,
the folder and that texture on top and drag these into yet another group folder, and that
kind of bakes these layers and settings into one piece. Alright next I’m going to take this smoke
texture and go a little nuts with it. I’m going to need three copies of it. I can hold option and drag a copy right above
it. Or I can use the shortcut Command J. And I’ll
do that again so I’ve got 3 copies. Then I’m going to hold the shift key so
I can select all three of these, and drag these up on top, over that group folder. And let me rename them. I’m going to call the bottom one “smoke
fill color”. I’ll call the middle one “smoke overlay”. And the top one, I’ll call “smoke on top”. Then let me turn off them all off and I’ll
run through them one by one. And first, I actually want this background
smoke to be quite a bit more subtle. I’m going to select that layer and bring
the opacity on this one in the background back to about 30%. Then back up to this smoke fill color. I’ll turn that one on and then I’m going
to option click between that and the group folder to create a clipping mask, so it’ll
just fill in the shapes of the letters. Then I’m going to select the group folder
and I’m going to apply a few effects to it. I’ll go to my effects menu and first I’m
going to use inner glow. Here, I’ll reset to defaults, then crank
that all the way up to 100%, and bring the size up a bit to maybe about 40. Then let’s add another effect. I’m going to click on outer glow. I’ll reset that to defaults. Then bring the opacity up to about 55% and
the size way up. I’ll try 200 pixels. Then one more effect. I’ll use inner shadow. I’ll reset to defaults, then bring the opacity
all the way up to 100, crank the distance up to about 50, and let me reverse the direction
of that. I’ll change the angle to negative 90 degrees,
because I want that shadow to fill kind of more of the bottom of the letters. And then I’ll soften it out, I’ll drag
the size all the way to the top at 250. And one more thing, I like the way this looks
better if I change the contour tab here to this kind of S curved profile. Now, the settings here, particularly on this
inner shadow, I’m kind of just eyeballing based on how they look for this font. With a different font or different size letters,
you might need to push these values around and kind of find a nice balance between shadowy
and glowy areas. But that’s looking nice and moody, so ok. And if you’re enjoying this tutorial so
far, please do hit that like button, I really do appreciate that. And be sure to subscribe. I’ve got a bunch of ideas for new tutorials
that I’m going to try to get to, so be sure and hit the alarm bell to be notified when
anything new goes live. Alright time for some more magic smoke going
in here. I’m gonna turn on this smoke overlay layer. And the only thing I’m going to do here
is set the blending mode on that one to overlay. And finally this smoke on top layer, I’m
going to get a little fancier with this one. I want some smoky details that kind of sit
on top of the letters. I’m going to double click on that layer
which is a quick way to get to the blending options. And then I’m going to use the blend if section. And blend if can look really cool with smoky
elements. First I’ll drag up the underlying black
slider and create some transparency based on the background. Then I’m going to hold option and split
that little slider, which smooths out the transition. And then on the this layer slider, I’ll
bring down the white level, and create some more transparency in that smoke. And, same thing, hold option, split that up
and kind of smooth out the transition a little bit. And I’m kind of just pushing these values
around, and finding a balance where some of the layer is transparent and some of it is
kind of obscuring the letters in a way that looks cool. Something like that. So ok. And that’s a subtle one, but if I turn that
on and off, I do think it helps glue the foreground and the background together. Kind of create this smoky areas that sort
of wrap around the edges of the letters. Alright, I’m going to drop one more texture
in here before getting to some color. I’m opening this Atmosphere 149, which is
actually a snow overlay but I think it’ll double as some magical particles. I’ll copy that and I’ll paste it all the
way on top. And let me do a quick Command T to transform
and scale that down to be about the same width as my image. Alright. And I’m going to set the blending mode on
this layer to linear dodge. And linear dodge is a blending mode that looks
better if you dial back the fill rather than opacity. That’s only the case for I believe 8 of
the blending modes, but linear dodge is one of them. So I’ll leave the fill at about 65% Alright,
everything is looking good it’s a little dark overall, and I want a full spectrum of
dark to light values in here. So I’m going to drop a levels adjustment
layer over everything. I’ll go into my fill and adjustment layers
menu here and create a levels. And all I need to do here is drag the white
input down, and that will will brighten the whole thing up a little bit. And finally, ;et’s get some color in here. So, to add some color, I’m going to use
the adjustment layer called gradient map. Here in my adjustment layers menu. This is a perfect image to use a gradient
map, where I can assign totally new colors to the image based on whatever gradient I
select or create here. Some of the presets are kind of cool, but
maybe a little too strange. I’m going to create a custom gradient, and
I’ll start with the very basic default black and white gradient. Then I’m going to click in the middle to
add a color, and click on the color button. And I’ll go with a very nice saturated medium
blue. And then maybe I’ll add a color in between
the dark values here, give the shadows just a tiny bit of a purple. And I’ll add one more color, and shift the
hue of these brighter values just a little bit toward green. And you could really spend all day in here
experimenting with color, there’s no one right way to do it, but I’ll save this gradient
as a preset and include a link to it if you want to download and import this same look. For now, I like how this is looking so I’ll
hit ok. And that is basically the whole thing. And a really nice thing about this setup is
that this text, which is way down in the original folder is actually still live. In fact, pretty much everything about this
whole look is still live, so there’s plenty of room to experiment and try different things
from here. And I think If I landed on a look and I really
liked, I might do one last thing. Make a flattened copy of the entire image
by going to the very top of the layers, and using the shortcut Command Option Shift E.
I actually don’t know where that is the menu, but that creates flattened version of
the entire image in one new layer. And the only thing I’m going to do here
is sharpen it up a little bit with filter, sharpen, unsharp mask. And and I’ll crank that up a little extra
just to make it really clear with the amount at 100% and the radius at two. Alright well there we have it, the finished
image. Kind of a crazy technique, but I hope you
guys like it. If so, please do hit that like button and
be sure to subscribe for more of this kind of thing on the way. If you use this technique to make something,
post it up online and tag Texturelabs in it, I’d love to check it out. Yu can find these textures and much much more
at texturelabs.org. Thanks for watching and I will see you next
time.
