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Make Text Out Of Smoke

posted by krissycokl

Create text out of smoke in just a few steps.

First things first: create a new document with a background color of white. In a new layer (Ctrl + Shift +N), type the letters that you’d like to look smoky in the color you’d like the smoke to be. For generic smoke, use a light grey. Choose a bulky font, like Gill Sans Ultra Bold (what I’m using) and keep a decent amount of space between the letters for legibility’s sake. Right click the text layer, and choose Rasterize Type.

Next, we create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N) and we perform Filter –> Render –> Clouds. Then, boost the contrast a bit using the levels tool (Ctrl + L).

Return to the other layer and select its contents (Ctrl + Click its thumbnail in the layer window).

Choose Select –> Modify –> Expand… –> 8px. Now choose Select –> Feather… –> 8px. Right click with the select tool (M) in hand and choose Select Inverse. Now, with the clouds layer selected, delete.

Next, we are going to put the text layer over the clouds layer and decrease its opacity to around 15%. Finally, we can make the effect look more smoky by grabbing the smudge tool and wisping around a bit with the clouds layer.

This effect can also turn your text to fire immediately by employing a color balance layer. (Layer –> New Adjustment Layer –> Color Balance…)