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STEAM & VAPOR

In stark contrast to the relatively easy tasks of photo correction and photo manipulation, adding natural elements to your
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images can be fraught with problems.  Unlike their hard -edged counterparts, steam has an almost ethereal quality which can
be hard to replicate, and even more difficult to blend seamlessly into your images.  With the following technique, however, you  Password:  
will learn a simple method for creating realistic steam using nothing except Photoshop's in -built filters and your own internal
attention to detail. b
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Step 1: Open up a stock image in Photoshop of any size Log In To Biorust!
and/or format. Please note that the image to my right was
grabbed from the excellent SXC.HU archive - where there are
tons of high quality pictures available for free! Lost Password? || Register

NB. When choosing a stock image, remember that steam forms

more easily in colder and wetter climates.  Nothing would look more    
ridiculous than fake steam being formed in the bright sunlight of the
desert from something as small as a coffee cup.   To this end you  Click Here!
may need to alter the color balance of your stock image to make the
light appear colder... but I will leave this step up to you!

Step 2: Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool and with the

Feather setting set to 25px, create a feathered section above
your object.   Then, with the cursor keys, move the selection 
into the centre of your canvas.  This positioning is only 
temporary, and stops your artificial steam overflowing the
canvas as it is created, which can cause a massive amount of
problems later.

NB. The size of the Feather value depends entirely on the resolution
of your stock image.  In my example, the image was 650x1000 
pixels.  If you have a bigger or smaller image you may want to 
increase or decrease the size of your Feather value accordingly.

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Photoshop
Author: alexroderick
Posted: Sep 07th, 11:26am
Activity: 3 replies, 14 views

 Hello from Ramla

Author: DBSRamla
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Step 3:   Create a new layer called  Clouds ( Layer > New > Looking for some logo design
Layer), and make it active in the layers palette. Set your Author: JasonE
foreground and background palette colors to mid -grey and Posted: Sep 06th, 10:34pm
white respectively.  Then, with the selection from  step 2 still Activity: 3 replies, 30 views
active, apply Filter > Render > Clouds.
Need HELP! how 2 vector the
This forms the basis of the steam, but to make it a little more photos
realistic we need to add Filter > Blur > Motion Blur .   Set the  Author: Happyger
Angle to -90 and the Distance to 160px (or more if you have a Posted: Sep 06th, 8:19pm
bigger image).   Press OK to finalize the effect. Activity: 3 replies, 33 views

You should now lose your selection by either clicking on the What happened
canvas or selecting Select > Deselect from the main menu. Author: turvas
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Creative Cow
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How do I make Sub-Forums in

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the HTML tag in a PHP...
 How do I make Sub-Forums in
PHPBB?
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Total Tutorials: 205
Total Downloads:     379
Linkbase Links: 257
Step 4:   Steam is, of course, very mobile and moves around 
with even the lightest of air currents.  To recreate this natural 
phenomenon we can use Filter > Distort > Wave with the
settings on the left.  As with the clouds filter, the results can be 
highly volatile and it is absolutely impossible to create the
exact same shape twice.  My advice is to play around freely 
with the settings and see what you can create.

If you have an obvious source of air currents in your picture (i.e. an

open window next to the object that is emitting steam), then you
may want to use Edit > Transform > Distort to mimic the effect of
massive air movements.

Step 5:   Our steam is looking much more realistic already, but 
to breathe real life into it we now need to alter the layer
blending mode to Hard Light and the Opacity to 90%.  Once you 
have done this, use the Move Tool to place the steam back
above the steaming object, and then whip out the Eraser Tool
to get rid of any steam which may be overhanging (i.e. in my
example, this would be steam showing BELOW the cup's edge).

Step 6:  And here is the finished result!  The effect is subtle yet 
realistic - just like proper steam!

At this point you are finished, but if you want to a stronger and
even more erratic steam effect you can go a little further.  To 
do this, duplicate the Clouds layer ( Layer > Duplicate Layer ),
drop the duplicate layer's Opacity to 60%, and flip the steam
with Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal . Then all that's needed
is a little manual adjustment with the Move Tool and you have
even better steam.

http://www.biorust.com/tutorials/detail/196/en/ Page 2 / 3
 - Tutorial written by Man1c M0g

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LAST 5 USER COMMENTS view entire thread

User:  iiiilyiiii(#32180)
Post #2 of 2
Date: Fri Sep 22, 2006. 16:35:24

I am fairly new to this site and a lot of these are a bit confusing, but this one was very straight forward and simple. I love it!

Reply to this post

User:  Andantonius (#24985)
Post #1 of 2
Date: Sun Mar 12, 2006. 04:43:19

I tried this out, really awesome work, so fast and perfect in results. It gets a 110% in my book, fast, simple, effective, and
usefull.

Reply to this post

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