Smoke Typography Showcase

Intuition Smoke

By Hautalken

Dissolve

By estheticcore

Smoke+Type

By Daniel Gordon

By Daniel Gordon

By Daniel Gordon

By Daniel Gordon

Smoke Typography

By Richie Thimmaiah

Smoke

By Giampiero Quaini

By Giampiero Quaini

War

By Marcelo Vaz

By Marcelo Vaz

Exhausted

By Mignonne Meekels

Spark Me

By Cam Hilsman

Smoke

By Rick Griemink

Smoke Type

By my-name-is-annie

Smoke Typo

By Canis Azureus

smoke.this

By Matias S. Gonzalez

Smoke.

By Anne Rhodes

Smoke

By pattysmear

Pelican – Typographic Treatment

By Ben White

Smoke Typography Brushes

Smoke Brush Set

Stunning Smoke Effects: 42 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Smoke Brushes

Smoke Typography Tutorials

Smoke Type in Photoshop in 10 Steps

Create Smokey Typography in 12 Steps

Create Smoke Text

Related Content

• How to Create Inset Typography in Photoshop
• Beautiful Gradient Typography in Web Design
• 20 Websites with Beautiful Typography
• Related categories: Graphic Design and Photoshop

About the Author

Hakan Nural is a freelance graphic designer and blogger from Turkey in İstanbul. He runs a couple of resource sites for graphic designers called Vectorss.com and Brushess.com which shares useful vector files and brushes. If you wish to keep up with Hakan, you can find him on Twitter: @vectorss.

Excerpt from:
Beautiful Designs with Smoke Typography

Here is the original post:
It’s December! Can I Have Your Help?

Originally posted here:
Create an Explosive Color Swath: Photoshop Tutorial

See the article here:
Add Dramatic Color to Photographs: Photoshop Tutorial!

Today, we are showing you Awesome Photos Captured By Photographers With Great Timing. I appreciate to all those talented photographers who taken these excellent photos with their efforts, imaginations and creativity to give us a chance to see these photographic wonders from their creative eyes. This list is not long in numbers but I promise you that when you start browsing them in details it will surely refresh you. These are the wonder creations of photographers who use their creativity with a different angle and approach to get the result that makes a difference.

You are welcome if you want to share more creative photographs and images that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.

You may be interested in these older posts
3D Portraits That Make You Say ‘Wow’
10 Stunning Photos That Look Like They are Photoshopped But Are Not
23 Awesome Photos That Look Like They’re Photoshopped But Are Not
21 Brilliant Photos That Look Like They’re Photoshopped But Are Not
60+ Incredible Tutorials And Resources Collections For Designers
50+ Creative Masterpieces Of Logo Designs Using Gradient Effects
21 Stunning Examples Of Creatively Done Stop Motion Animations
15 Most Useful & Free Collection Of Ready-To-Use Design Freebies
43 Really Useful Photoshop Tutorials For Excellent 3d Effects
17 Mind-Blowing Digital Painting Tutorials Of Beautiful Girls
31 Masterpieces Of Creative And Clever Advertising Concepts
21 Really Stunning Photoshopped Photos For Creative Inspiration
43 Of The Extremely Creative Wonders Of Macro Photography
27 Best Places You Should Visit To Get Incredible Web Design Inspiration!
21 Extremely Vibrant And Creative Advertisements With Animals
39 Masterpieces Of Creative Advertisements
17 Digital Image Illustration Which You Probably Never Seen Before!
15 Digital Photo Manipulation From Flickr To Get Inspiration
23 Awesome Photos That Look Like They’re Photoshopped But Are Not

Sky in the cart by vitor cid

Thunderbolt over the sea by nini_filippini

Jumping Girl by scarabuss

Eyeliner by Norbert Probst

Catching 1000 Stars by impressionenmeer

Tennis by Rafa Gòmez

East Sands Dawn by Dienices

Edgar the great by Jure Kravanja

Question? by Peter Walmsley

Snowball Fights by Eibo-Jeddah

Hungarian skies by realityDream

Brought To You By

Do you want to advertise here? Click to get more info…

Follow this link:
Awesome Photos Captured By Photographers With Great Timing

The Image

You can get the image we’re using in this tutorial from Free Range Stock here. The technique can be applied to a beauty shot as well, you would just have to adjust the settings on some of the steps to get a more extreme smoothing effect.

Step 1

If you look at the blue channel, you will notice that it doesn’t look so good. There are a lot of JPG artifacts that you don’t really see when looking at the RGB composite, but it’s good to fix it for a variety of reasons. Importantly, it will reduce the color noise in the image and give us more flexibility when making corrections later down the line.

Duplicate the Background layer. On the new layer go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter 10 for the radius. Hit OK. Set the layer’s blending mode to color. Double-click on the layer to the right of the name to open the blending options. Under Advanced Blending, uncheck the R and the G. This makes the layer only affect the blue channel no matter what we do to it. Now go back and check out the blue channel. Looks better.

Step 2

Now I will use Curves to balance the color in the image. I suggest using Curves over Levels for everything. Curves just gives you much more control.

Download my curve preset to your hard drive.

Create a new Curves Adjustment layer at the top of the layers palette, then click the little button to the right of the Preset control, and select Load Preset and load the file.

Step 3

The technique that we are going to use to smooth out the face doesn’t require very much cloning at all. I do want to use the Healing Brush Tool (J) on any major freckles or blemishes, in this case her four large freckles.

Create a new blank layer just above the background copy. Select the Healing Brush (J) and make sure that “Sample All Layers” is checked on the property bar. Paint over those spots to remove them.

A good rule of thumb is to never modify your source image in any way. That is why we used the healing brush on a new layer. You never know when you might need to go back to where you started.

Step 4

Select the three layers below the Curve layer. Drag them down to the New Layer button to duplicate them. Hit Command+E to merge the three duplicates.

Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool and click around her face until all the skin is selected. It doesnt need to be too neat. Now go back, and while holding Alt, click around and deselect anything that is not skin like the eyes, eyebrows, lips, and nostrils. Go back once more and deselect any areas of detail that need to remain, like the edge of the nose, her dimples, her collar bones, and the edge of her chin. This is what my selection looks like as a quick mask:

Hit Shift+Command+I to invert the selection and then Delete to delete those pixels. You won’t actually notice a change because the layers below are the same as the layer we are working on.

Step 5

Go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter 20 for the Radius. Set the layer Opacity to 75%. Select and duplicate the same bottom three layers just like we did before. Hit Command+E to merge them. Put that layer just above the blurred layer. With the new layer selected, hit Command+Alt+G. This creates a clipping mask, which is indicated by the arrow pointing down on the layer. This means that the layer on top will use the bottom layer’s transparency as a mask.

Step 6

With your new layer still selected, go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Enter 4 for the Radius.

Now you can really see how that clipping mask is working, but not for long. Set the blending mode of the layer to Linear Light and set the Opacity to 40%. Done!

Rollover the image below to see the before / after…

This will pretty much work on any portrait, but the goal isn’t to make the person look like a model, it’s just meant to smooth things out a bit yet still look natural. That is why it works well on everyday average people.

Before we get started, let’s take a look at the image we’ll be creating. Before and after images are shown below. Click the screenshot to view a large color version.

Step 1

Double-click on the background image to make it an active layer. Create a new group by clicking on the little folder icon located at the bottom of the layers palette and put the layer in the group. Name the group “girl”. Draw a path around all the hard edges of the girl. This includes the face and the shoulders. Don’t worry about the hair for now; we will do that separately. Save the path. Make a selection of the path by holding Command-clicking on the path thumbnail in the paths palette. Hit Alt+Command+D and Feather the selection by 0.5px. Apply the selection as a mask on the “girl” group.

Step 2

Disable the mask on the “girl” group by holding Shift-clicking on the mask thumbnail. Now in the Channels palette, duplicate the red channel by dragging it to the New Channel button at the bottom of the palette. Apply a harsh curve, like the one below, to separate the hair from the background as much as you can.

Step 3

Hit Command+I to invert the red copy channel. Re-enable the mask on the “girl” group. Load the selection of the red copy channel with your background color set to white. Hit Delete(backspace) to fill the selection with white on the “girl” mask. If you hit Alt+Click on the mask thumbnail, you can see the mask as a channel. Clean up anything that looks as though it shouldn’t be there, like that line between the hair and the face.

Step 4

Now let’s start to add some color using a Gradient Map. In the “girl” group, make a new Gradient Map adjustment layer just above layer 0. Hit OK without doing anything and set the Gradient Map layer’s blending mode to Color. Now double-click on the Gradient Map’s layer thumbnail to open up the settings again.

A Gradient Map uses the grayscale data from the image below it to apply the gradient that you create. The left side of the gradient represents the darkest parts of the image. The right side represents the light parts. We need to make a gradient that represents what the woman’s skin tone might look like from dark to light. I used the gradient below.

Step 5

Draw a path around the eyes. Load the selection of the path and Feather it 0.5px as we did before. Make a Curves adjustment layer just above the skin layer. Then lighten the eyes a little bit. Now make a Gradient Map layer just above the curves layer and hit OK before adjusting any settings. Set the new Gradient Map layer’s blending mode to color. Now hit Alt+Command+G to apply it as a clipping mask to the curves layer. Now change the Gradient Map’s settings to a pink-to-white fade like below.

Step 6

Draw a path around just the iris of the eye. Note that we need only the path to follow that one curve between the iris and the whites because the adjustment we are making will be applied as a clipping mask. Load the selection and Feather it 2px. Make a solid color adjustment layer just above the Gradient Map from the previous step. Then set it to a dark faded green. Hit Alt+Command+G to apply it to the same clipping mask you made earlier. Set the blending mode of the green layer to color. You might have to go back and adjust the green until you get a color that looks real.

Step 7

Repeat all the previous steps for the lips, except for this one we’ll leave the blending mode of the Gradient Map to Normal, and set the layer’s Opacity to 65%.

Step 8

We need to get more variance of color in the skin tones to make it look more real. I made some selections around the eyes, nose, and cheeks. Then I feathered them 20–40px, created solid color adjustment layers, set the blending modes to Color, and brought the Opacity way down to 10-20%. Below you can see my selections as quick masks. The layer palette shows the colors I used for the different areas. As you can see I used some red to add some blush to the cheeks, some red around the nose, mouth and eyes, and some blue to go on the bags of her eyes. These small details make all the difference.

Step 9

Make a loose selection around the face and neck and feather it 50px. Make a curves adjustment layer just above the ’skin’ Gradient Map that we made earlier. I just went in and tweaked the colors a bit to get a little more color variation in the skin tone. You can download the curve file I used here.

Step 10

Now we need to make a selection of the hair. I used the path that I saved from Step 1. Then I modified it a little to line up with the hairline’s shape and softness. I did this by using Quick Mask Mode(Q), and using brushes of various sizes and softness to match the hairline.

Make a new Gradient Map adjustment layer at the top of the “girl” group. Make the gradient a similar to the image below. I left the blending mode at Normal for this layer.

Step 11

Make a selection of the shirt. Then make a new Gradient Map adjustment layer. Hit OK and set the blending mode to Color, as we have done before. Edit the gradient so that it looks something like the one below. You will have to play around with the gradient until you get a good separation between the green and white stripes.

Step 12

Choose a Sky image. I used one I shot myself, but there are plenty of stock images you could use. Bring it into the document below the “girl” group. Hit Command+T, and size it to fill the frame. It looks good, but notice that our hair mask still isn’t really looking that good against the blue background. The hair turns a muddy gray in the transition between hair and sky. To fix this, make a new blank layer just above Layer 0 (the image of the girl). With a large and soft black brush paint over those areas with an Opacity of 15-25% until the transition looks better.

As an added bonus, I applied the techniques from the Super Quick and Easy Facial Retouching tutorial to smooth out her face a little bit. As you can tell, I decided to make her red haired, but you can make your gradients whatever color you would like. She just seemed like a redhead to me. Here is the final image.