Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create a stunning, smoke portrait.
Before we begin, if my tutorials have helped you learn or improve in Photoshop,
please consider supporting my channel by becoming my patron for as little as $2 per month.
Click the Patron button at the upper right or the Patreon link in my video's description below.
Any amount you can pledge is greatly appreciated.
There have been a few tutorials on smoke portraits, however,
I wanted to do one that streamlines the process by removing many of the steps
that I felt were unnecessary.
First, download the custom brush set I provided.
Its located in my video’s description below or project files.
If you’re not sure how to install them, watch my tutorial showing how to do it.
I provided that link, as well.
Create a new document by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + N.
Make its Width: 1920 pixels, its Height: 1080 pixels and its Resolution: 72 pixels per inch.
The background is white.
Then, click "Create" or Open".
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Gradient".
Click the Gradient bar and click the "Black, White" thumbnail.
Click the lower, left Stop and the color box.
In the hexadecimal field, type in 80, three times.
Then, click OK on the the Color Picker and Gradient Editor.
Make the Style: "Radial", the Angle: 45 degrees and check "Reverse".
Make the Scale: 200%.
Make the background active.
Since we don't need it anymore, press the "Delete" key on your keyboard or, if you're
using an earlier version of Photoshop, drag the background to the Trash.
Open a photo of someone's face that you'd like to use for this project.
I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
We're going to make a selection around our subject in order to separate it from its background.
There are many ways to do this, but for this example, I'll use the Quick Selection Tool.
If you're using this tool as well, I find that approximately a 10 pixel radius generally
works fine for most photos.
Drag the cursor over your subject.
To remove areas outside your subject, press and hold Alt or Option as you drag over those areas.
Once you make the selection, you can refine it by going to Select and "Select and Mask"
or, on versions earlier than CC 2015.5, Refine Edge.
I did in-depth tutorials on both Select and Mask and Refine Edge, so if you'd like
to watch them, I provided their links, aswell.
Once you refine it, output it to a "New Layer with Layer Mask".
We'll convert our separated image into Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right of the Layers panel and click, "Convert to Smart Object".
We'll place our subject onto the background we created earlier.
To do this, press "v" to open your Move Tool and drag your subject onto the tab of the background.
Without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down and release.
To resize, position and angle it, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T.
If you don't see the Transform's entire bounding box, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
To resize it, go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press and hold
Alt or Option + Shift as you drag it in or out.
To re-position it, go inside the bounding box and drag it.
To angle it, go to a corner and when you see a curved, double-arrow, rotate it to an angle you like.
Continue to finesse it until you like its size, position and angle.
Then, press Enter or Return.
To fit in back onto your canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd and the plus key on your keyboard.
Click the Adjustment layer icon and click "Black White".
Open the Black and white preset list and click “Infrared”.
Next, we'll intensify our subject’s brightness and contrast even more.
Make you subject active and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click “Curves”.
If the bottom of the Curves panel is hidden, just drag the panel down.
In the second box from the bottom, go to the diagonal line and drag the control point down just a wee bit.
Go to the top right corner box and drag it up approximately this much.
Adjustment layers affect all the layers below it in the Layers panel, but we want the Curves
Adjustment layer to affect just our subject and not the background.
Either click the Clipping mask icon or press Ctrl + Alt + G on Windows or Cmd + Option + G on a Mac.
You can also go to Layer and "Create Clipping Mask".
We're ready to reveal our subject through smoke.
First, make your subject active and Alt-click or Option-click the Layer Mask icon to make
an inverted layer mask.
This masks out your subject.
We'll reveal it back in by stamping the layer mask with the smoke brushes I provided.
In the Properties panel, temporarily reduce the layer mask's "Density", so we can see
our subject through it.
Invert your foreground and background colors by pressing "x" on your keyboard.
White should be your foreground color.
Open your Brush Tool and Brush Picker.
Scroll down.
If you don't see the “Real Smoke” preset, click the gear icon and click it.
You'll see a message that either asks you to add the smoke brushes to your list of Brush
presets or asks you to replace or append your present list.
For the later, click "Append" and for the former, click OK.
Open the group to see all your choices.
This is an enormous set of real smoke images, so you have plenty from which to choose.
I like to start with a smoke image that defines the jawline of my subject.
Once you click on a brush, press Enter or Return.
Make sure the Opacity and Flow are both 100%.
Before we click on our document to apply the smoke, we have the ability to rotate our image,
so the smoke conforms to the angle of our subject.
To do this, press and hold "R" on your keyboard and when you see the compass, rotate it to
angle that fits the particular smoke brush.
When you release the rotation, your Brush Tool should automatically become active again.
If, for some reason, it doesn't, press "B" on your keyboard.
To see your subject right side up, open your Navigator panel.
If you don't see it, go to Window and Navigator.
Then, position the smoke and click once to stamp it onto your image.
If you don't like the effect of a particular smoke image, just press "z" to undo it.
If you want to adjust the smoke's size, press the left or right bracket key on your keyboard.
To rotate your image back to normal, press "R" again and rotate it back.
If you press the Shift key as you do it, it'll snap into position.
Once you have two or three smoke brushes on your subject, open back the Properties panel
and increase the layer mask's density to 100%.
Then, open back the Navigator panel.
Continue these steps to reveal more of the face through the smoke brushes.
Notice that the smoke is confined to the shape of your subject.
Next, we'll add smoke onto the background that's not confined to the face.
To do this, first, make the Curves adjustment layer active and make a new layer above it.
Make sure your foreground color is black and open a smoke brush.
Adjust its size and rotate the canvas to get your subject to be angled that's best for
the smoke brush you're using.
If you want to add white smoke, just press "x" on your keyboard to invert your foreground
and background colors.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!