Semi-Realistic Firi

Semi-Realistic Fire
Your going to be making some thing along the lines of this:

First you need to open up a new document:

File > New or Hit Ctrl+N

Make this doc 400x400 (px), Hit OK

Now your click on the custom shape tool:

Go up to where you choose which one it is and choose the fire one (how ironic) :

Once you have that chosen, your going to make a big flame. Click in the top left corner and drag it to the bottom right corner. (Hold shift to keep it proportional):

It doesnt matter what color your big flame is because we are going to change the blending options on it and give it a Gradient Overlay, so Right-click on your shape layer and go to blending options:

Now click on gradient overlay, your going to see a drop down menu with a bunch of choices, your going to want to pick the orange-yellow-orange gradient

Now make sure your options are like this:

Now your big flame should appear like this:

Now grab your Custom Shape Tool again

and make a bunch of small, medium and large flames all over your bigger one, you can do this fast just cover up the black background behind the original big flame:

Stop once you have made about 40-50. (I did around 60 I think, must have gotten a little carried away.)

Now go to Layers > Merge Visible :

Now make a new layer (Layer > New > Layer), get the paintbucket tool out, choose black and fill the new layer and click and drag it under your fire layer:

This will make it easy to see and it looks a lot better.

Now your going to want to select your fire layer once again so you can do the smudging.

Now this is when we get out the smudge tool:

Now change its options to this (found at the top):

Now your going to want to Click and Drag from the bottom or around the middle of the bottom out through the top. You will end up making a ton of smudges, this is when your artist ability kicks in... Everytime you smudge your making a new flame basically.

NOTE: You should change the size of your smudge brush a few times so you have different size flames:

Now give it a try, click and hold somewhere in the middle or bottom of the flame and drag it to where you want the flame to end:

Now that you have your flameball you can touch up the bottom of it. Change the size of your smudge brush to about 45:

Now you wanna smudge from the black up around the bottom to give it the nice round effect:

To add the red that you see in this picture:

You need to duplicate your fire layer (right-click on the layer):

Now go to Filter > Noise > Dust and Scratches

Make your options like this:

Now go to the blend mode and change it to color burn:

It should now look like this:

If you want to change the colors of the flame, like the blue one at the top, you need to go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation:

Now change your options to this for blue, hit ok:

This for purple, and then hit ok:

Now your done! Congrats on making it through all that! Its a very simple process it just takes time to learn it the first time. You can apply this to many things.

source: http://jedezigns.com