PHOTOMANIPULATION
ENHANCE IT AND ADD THE FINISHING TOUCHES
MAKE YOUR IMAGE MORE REALISTIC WITH SOME FINAL TWEAKSQUICK TIP
An easy way to enhance your fire elements even
further is to duplicate the layer. After that add a
Gaussian Blur with a radius of about 30 to give
your fire elements a nice soft glow. Use this on
flames as well as sparks.14
ENHANCE THE FLAME’S GLOW ON THE BODY
Add a blank layer above your subject. Grab a Soft brush, change the Opacity to around 20% and make
it orange. Take your brush and paint over your subject where the light from the fire should be hitting them. Clip
the layer to your model layer so it only affects that. Turn your blending mode to Color. Use the procedure from
Step 9 to make it only affect the highlights. Add a layer mask and mask out any areas that shouldn’t have the
glow from the fire.15
FINAL COLOUR GRADING
First add a Channel Mixer adjustment
layer. Choose the Black and White With Green
preset. You will notice this turns your image black
and white. You want to use this adjustment for
some desaturation so bring the Opacity down to
15%. Next add a Color Balance adjustment layer.
The Color Balance adjustments will vary from
image to image so play around with them to get
the look you want. For this image the Shadows and
Midtones were pushed towards the cyan and blue
tones, while the Highlights were pushed towards
the red and yellow tones.13
ADD REAL FIRE ELEMENTS AND SMOKE
Although you are using Render Flame to create custom fire elements, it’s hard to beat the real
thing. For the main fireball, use a real photo of fire on a black background. Put the fire on top of the layer
you want it to be over and turn the blending mode to Screen. On you keyboard hold down Cmd/Ctrl+T. This
will allow you to transform and size your flame. Follow the same steps to add fog and smoke. A great
smoke and fog package can be bought at http://www.phlearn.com. Use a Levels adjustment layer to adjust the
amount of fog or smoke.12
CREATE SPARKS
To create sparks you will reverse the
process a little. Create a new layer and grab a Hard
Round brush set at 8 pixels. Start drawing very
small dots and dashes about the size of sparks.
Use the Magic Wand tool to select the negative
space of the layer then inverse the selection. Next
go to your Paths panel then click the Make Work
Path from Selection icon. Follow the procedure
from Step 10 and make sure to change your
blending mode to Screen. Add a Motion Blur to give
the sparks some motion.