Flames Tutorial

[masokist]

Part 1: The Flame

This will be your end product:
End Product

First: Create a new document, 500x500 and a white background.

Second: Take your elliptical marquee tool with the settings below:


Third: Click somewhere around the center of your canvas, and then fill your selection with black.

Fourth: Now change your elliptical marquee tool's width and height to: W:180 px Ht:350 px
and select an area within the center of your filled oval, like below:


now clear your selection (hit the delete key, or Edit->Clear )

Fifth: Take your Rectangular Marquee tool, and select half of your shape towards the right side, along with the rest of your canvas to the right, if done right, from the center point of your shape to the right side of the canvas should be selected. Once that has been done, select the Shear filter (Filter -> Distort -> Shear ) and set your setting as closely to mine as possible:


It may look a bit sloppy now, but we will clean that up later.

Sixth: Select the opposite side of your canvas and shape. now, apply the shear filter to these settings (when you open the dialog box, you will want to hit the "Defaults" button to reset all values):


Seventh: Now it is time to clean it up a bit, for this, you will want to unselect everything, and go to Filter -> Liquify. Play around with it a bit, round out the bottom edges of the flames, give the tips "tips" and also, stretch the bottom of the flame all the way to the bottom. Play around with the setting of your brush, mess with the size, density and pressure of your brush to suit your liking. Also try the zoom, zoom in on those hard to see places to make them nice and round. Try to make your image resemble the one below:


It does not have to be perfect, later on you may want to clean it up better, but for now, it doesn't need to be perfect.

If after you have done this, if you think your flame is too wide, select half of it and move it until you feel it is better proportioned. (after you move it, you may want to go back and use the liquify effect to make the bottoms match better)

Eighth: now it is time for you layer style, click on the layer style button (circled F in the bottom of you layer pane) and set your styles accordingly:

Drop Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Color Overlay

Now move your flame until the part of the bottom is not visible so you do not get that akward looking bottom, it makes it look a lot more smooth as well.

Now you should have your end product flame.

Here is mine:


After you have done this, play around with the settings the next time, make your circle larger or smaller, play around with the shear, change some of the layer styles around, there are limitless possibilities as to what you can do with this.

Part 2 (Optional): The Brush

Once you have completed Part 1, you are ready to make a brush so you can use your flame on anything, anywhere, and best of all, any color.

Create a new document, the same size as your original. Then with the move tool (black pointer with the four crossed thing) move your flame onto your new document, once it has been placed, move it to the center, and keep the bottom of the flame in it too, unlike when you created your flame and moved it below the canvas.

You may notice that when you move your flame to the new document, it is only the black base, go back to the original, and copy the layer style ( right click layer style -> Copy Layer Style ), and paste it onto your black shape ( Right click -> Paste layer style).

Trim your canvas of all pixels around your flame ( Image -> Trim ).

Now go to Image -> Image Size, and scale it down about, change the width to about 250 or so (the height should change too with "constrain proprotions" checked).

Now go to Edit -> Define Brush Pattern, and name it "Flame"

And there is your brush, on a new layer, select your brush (brush tool, scroll ALL the way down to the bottom) and play around with it, change the colors, etc.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial, please post your outcomes, i would love to see what you came up with.

and if you are reading this and have not yet registered, please register with our forums!

Masokist

PS: after playing around with this for a while, i came up with this:

[tacoX]

Looks pretty cool and abstract, although not that real. Nice job, I will submit to a few tutorial sites!

[masokist]

I was kind of going for the flames effect that your see done on cars and what not, i love those kind of graphics, i think they are awesome.

[tacoX]

Oh, I see - the sticker-type graphics. Your right, it does come out very similar to that.

I submitted it as 'Abstract Flames'. I woulda submitted as 'Car Flames' if I'd known that =).

[Kritacul]

very nice tut man...
were did u get those tech brushes from?

[covaleek]

Nice, very nice. It reminds my 'Pimp my Ride'...;D

[slovy]

dang so cool good tut man

[dolive]

good idea and very unique!!!

nice tut man 9/10

[ronny5791]

i love this one is so easy to use

[masokist]

thanks man, glad you liked, good to know that it was easy. how did your work come out? post it.