How To Add Smoke Effect In Lightroom

[Amit Bolds]

Youcan get rid of most of it in Lightroom/Camera Raw. Move the blacks/shadows sliders to the left. The fireworks are so bright they'll be at the other end of the histogram and largely unaffected. You could do this with levels or curves.

You may still wish to increase overall contrast slightly using the black and white sliders in Lighteoom4. I would use these sparingly as a little goes a long way depending on the effect you are after.

In Photoshop you could also add a layer behind, either of a gradient, from a sample section of the sky, from another photo, or by blurring the main picture, and then manually mask (not sure if that's the right term) away the smoke.

Here are two images from the 2016 movie. We can see that there is a glowing effect, lively smoke, a strong cyan color grade with magenta in the shadows (really shows up in the fringes of the smoke), glowing eyes on some ghosts, and inner light revealing a lit and shadowed skeletal structure. Clearly, all of the actors were lit from below and most from two main light sources on either side of them.

At the time of this article it was Halloween so I got a pirate skeleton from Costco. I hung it from a boom arm in the same spot that the subject had been standing and took a picture with my camera on a tripod in the same spot it had been for the subject.

Now turn off your front lighting and move your strip boxes behind the skeleton. Get them as close to being directly behind him without having them visible behind the skeleton. This will provide a strong backlight to the skeleton and his front will fall into shadow giving the illusion that he is glowing from the inside.

Edit your photo as you normally would for any portrait keeping in mind three things:

1. You want to shift your color temperature to a strong blue and your tint to a slight magenta.

2. You want to boost your highlights and whites until they are brightly lit.

3. Reducing clarity will help things look more ghostly.

Now using the pen tool, magic wand, quick selection tool, and/or the brush, cut out your subject from the background using a layer mask. There are enough tutorials on this to choke 1268 horses, so look up your favorite if you need help.

Crop the image so it is the final proportions you want (I chose 5 x 7). Be sure to leave room around the sides and top for smoke. Create a solid color fill layer and place it behind the layer with your subject on it.

I added a levels adjustment layer to bump up the contrast slightly so the whites glow a little more and the darks are more dramatic. Create a clipping mask so that these changes only affect the layer with the subject on it. If you are really on your game, you can get this adjustment right when you are making your adjustments in Lightroom and can skip this step. This was an easy fix for me though.

While holding the Ctrl key, click on the layer mask for the subject layer. This is a sneaky way to get a selection that is a perfect match for your cutout. You should now see the marching ants selection line on your screen that follows the outline of your subject perfectly.

Adjust each of the glows until you have a nice transition from subject to blackness. I wanted it to be more subtle on this subject but you could crank up the opacity on these two glow layers for a more dramatic effect.

In Photoshop, open your skeleton picture that was photographed with the same lighting you used on your subject. Drag that image to your subject file, which will create a new layer with the skeleton on it. Make sure the skeleton layer is on top.

NOTE: I had to transform the skeleton using scale, warp, and puppet warp to get the bones to line up properly. I also had to clone out or cut out all the pirate-y parts, which you can avoid if you get a regular skeleton instead of a pirate one.

Now create a layer mask and use the brush tool to mask out parts of the skeleton so that the skeleton appears to be visible through parts of the skin but not others. Reducing the flow of the brush and building the effect slowly may be easier.

Repeat the step above with the photo of your skeleton lit from behind. This time set the layer style to hard light. When you mask in this layer, use only the front part of the rib cage. This will help sell the illusion that the light is emanating from the center of the ghost instead of behind. This layer should be on top.

Now create a new layer between your glow layer and your black background. Select the brush tool and pick a cloud brush (I just used the default one provided with Photoshop). Paint in white smoke behind your ghost.

I found this easiest to do by painting the smoke in, then creating a layer mask, reducing the brush size a little, and masking out the edges to shape the smoke and reduce its opacity in the center in a patchy foggy way.

Next make sure you have clicked on the smoke layer (not its layer mask if you are using one) and select the blur path filter. Make one to two arcs going up and away from the ghost to simulate smoke or fog blasting or burning off of them rather than just clouds floating around. Refer to the image of the single woman ghost from the movie or my image below.

Create a new layer on top of the layer stack. Make a circle over an eye using the elliptical marquee tool. NOTE: Hold shift to make a perfect circle and hold the space bar if you need to move the circle while you are sizing it.

Stroke the circle (Edit>Stroke) with a white line. Set the location to inside. Apply a Gaussian blur so that the edge of the circle matches the sharpness of the rest of the image (for me about 0.5-0.7). It can be a little softer actually since it is supposed to be glowing light.

For this to be most effective, the line weight of the stroke should be kept small (about 2-4 pixels) and it should be placed so the pupil and the very dark outer edge of the iris is still visible. See detail below:

Next create a gradient map adjustment layer on top of the layer stack. Set the dark color to a very dark purple-blue (020034) and the light to a bright cyan (a9f0ff). Set the layer style to color. Set the opacity to 31%.

IMPROVEMENT

By Design by Ralph Caplan

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee & John Buscema

How to See by George Nelson

On Writing by Stephen King

The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married by Gary D. Chapman

The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter

FUN

The Chronicles of Narnia Series by C.S. Lewis

Halfway to Heaven by Mark Obmascik

Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Jack Reacher Series by Lee Child

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss

Neil Gaiman - almost anything he has written

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R.R. Martin

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

When I was a much younger digital artist, taking classes in the early days of computer generated special effects, I had an instructor that insisted we would benefit from learning the ways of crafting special effects that were non-digital. Completely analog, if you will.

So when I set out to create an image to convey the idea of elemental forces of nature playing chess with each other, I knew I wanted to use natural elements, not simulations. I had my shot list: Fire (and therefore smoke), water splashes, and a chess set that would accommodate easy compositing of these elements.

Capturing the fire was more fun than anybody should probably be allowed to have indoors. I devised a rig to propel a few tablespoons of powdered coffee creamer over an open flame. This is surprisingly reliable and produces an exciting ball of flame that quickly dissipates before it can cause any real threat. Even after I had some great shots, I found myself going back to do more and more simply because of how fun and easy it was to produce.

Kirk is a self proclaimed Friendly Neighborhood Graphics Geek. With 20 years of industry experience, a degree from George Mason University and an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Photoshop, Kirk has worked in almost every aspect of visual design. His work has been published over 400 times in various international publications and he currently freelances as an author and artist in the Washington DC area.

I chose the Zeiss LWZ flare prest and positioned the flare to the top lext of the image. To zoom the image canvas in/out, use the middle mouse scroll wheel OR short cut keys I + O.

To add a smoky feel to the lens flare, twirl down the Atmosphere tab in the parameter window. Increase the Atmosphere Amplitude and Frequency settings to your liking.

Now, to add more depth and atmosphere, we will explore the Particle Illusion category. Here you will find hundreds of environmental effects like smoke, clouds, explosions, fireworks, and so much more. The particle effects are generated by a powerful animation engine but the interface hides much of the complexity typically found in 3D animation tools.

Particle effects are broken into sub categories (Clouds, Water, Fireworks, etc), but if we want to search them all, choose PI Complete. We can scroll through the presets or use the search window.

Something that is not on the list, but some people say it should, is a tripod. If you have trouble holding your camera for long periods of time, a tripod is the way to go. But the smoke from the incense stick will be moving from left to right, and front to back. Even when you have all the windows closed, your breath will make it move.

There is a bit of a learning curve here and I can assure you that the first 20 or 30 shots will be rubbish. But just keep on peeking on your screen and learn from every shot. Remember that peeking means you are moving air around that will stir the smoke. There are ways to minimize movement in the smoke. I tried shooting tethered to an iPad. My Canon 6D has wifi, and it worked like a charm. Maybe you can pull something similar yourself with a laptop or desktop.

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