Animation = After Effects. Strokes –> After Effects, 3D-program (particles, hair, displaced textures). Beyond that I think you are looking for a one-out solution where there can be none. It’s certainly a lot of manual painting and/or 3D modeling the items and/or multiple exposure photography or a combination of all the techniques. Personally I can’t well imagine that they would go through a elaborate photographic process for each o their offerings due to the cost, so it’s most likely all artificial, regardless. Sure you could get a proper streak by using the methods I already mentioned, either natively in the programs or by some third-party plugins. Likewise, I could imagine that a combo of PS, Illustrator and some plugin might give the right result.
Mylenium
Mylenium,
Thanks for the assistance. I hear you on the After Effects. As far as the stills I’m guessing it’s either the LED exposure technique or maybe just Pshop. If I can make an authentic still version I’d be happy with a non-exact animation since in Flash I’ll have to downsize substantially for downloading.
Still we are still talking in theory here, there has to be someone that can elaborate on the techniques.
What I did was two things to achieve this. I took a reversed smoke stream and colorized it and then warped it. Another thing I did was make many feathered brush strokes and then warped as well. Close but no cigar.
try setting a bright orange swoosh to linear dodge, then add an inner glow, source from the center, set to colour dodge with a white colour and adjust the inner glow’s opacity, choke, size and range to taste.
Peter,
I know exactly what you’re describing. Thanks. But… I got the same effects using an inner glow on Vivid light… there’s more of a texture possibly smeared out of with the smear tool, hard to tell.I can get the illumination right, just not the look.
Want to really learn Photoshop, Will?
Dig in deep, experiment, and develop your own technique. Maybe it’ll be similar to the thing that inspired you, oreven bettermaybe you’ll come up with a "look" you can truly call your own.
It’s the experimentation and invention that takes Photoshop out of the realm of just being a place to practice image recipes, and blasts it into the stratosphere of fun creativity.
Ahhhh! I knew that was you! =)
Well, as always, I appreciate your pushing me to learn the far reaching ends of the universe. I’m glad you have my best interests at heart.
I’m NOT in the path of mimicking something and calling it my own.. but thanks for the suggestion.
My request was to see if someone knew of such a "recipe" since my "recipe" is in need of assistance. If not, then my post would fade into oblivion.
Thanks for taking this post to the next level… I’ve should of known I had it in me the whole time. I just need to believe.
Yes, of course, if you want wispy smears, then you have to draw those yourself somehow! I thought it was the effect that you needed help with. Using liquify and/or smudge will probably get you something similar. This was made using some textured brushes and smudge, with the effects I described above. Two layers of orange smudges with the glow effects, and I also added one red outer glow set to colour dodge to tint the difference clouds background.
Woah! That looks great.. I want to make that too. =)
OK. Could you do me a big favor? I know you described this in your last two posts, but this needs to be described in one post step-by-step. I would GREATLY appreciate this. This look is EXACTLY what I’m looking for.
You are the man!
I was trying a bright desaturated whitish on a dark background, using Vivid light Inner Glow. I’d have to make Paths and then apply a brush to it. I never had any luck using texture brushes, but now that I see it in that picture, I was approaching it wrong.
Again, thanks, and I hope to see a step-by-step.
This was made using some textured brushes and smudge, with the effects I described above.
wow. 🙂
Ok, here are the steps I did:
1. Drew a path in an s-shape with the pen tool.
2. Picked a spotty-textured brush, spacing at 1%. Play with the angle jitter in shape dynamics setting to initial direction or direction, etc. to get the brush behaviour to give different kinds of overlap.
3. Select path and in the paths palette menu, stroke path with the brush using a reddish-orange colour
4. Pick smudge tool, with the same textured brush and stroke the path. Some of the texture gets smudged away, but then I just used the smudge tool with strength settings less than 100% to manually brush it back along the s-curve, adding in my own little wisps to taste.
5. Add an inner glow effect, (vivid light, or colour dodge mode) colour white, opacity 100%, source center, and adjust the size and choke and range to get the hilight to the size you want.
6. Duplicated the layer and used the Filter-Maximum to contract it by a few pixels. This gives me a little more punch in the center of the glow, a little more variation to the shape, as some of it goes transparent, while the thicker wisps remain, and I smudged out a few more interesting wisps using smudge strength settings of 60-90 percent to have them taper off at the ends.
7. Adjusted the glow settings some more on each layer to get the kind of white-yellow-orange range I wanted.
8. Drew some crescent-shaped paths in the two wisps near the top end, made a selection from the path, feathered it a good few pixels and brushed in some extra colour to add some pixels into the transparent areas so that the inner glow would have something to work on and add some more hilight up there.
8. Added an outer glow set to colour dodge, using a red colour, and adjusted the settings to spread it out big and soft to add more of an atmospheric glow around the swoosh.
Peter,
You are the man! I tried this,,, and it’s so close, but no cigar. The only issue I’m coming up with is this:
7. Adjusted the glow settings some more on each layer to get the kind of white-yellow-orange range I wanted.
I can’t seem to get that pop of white in the swoosh. To back up a bit, I used a semi-unsaturated bright orange as my base color. The inner glow of white shows up as yellow (and not the white color).
When I say white, I mean more of a super bright of the color being used. Currently it seems to be only two colors: the base color, and the inner glow color. That’s it.
Also to add, this set of instructions you didn’t mention using a layer mode (i.e. Linear Dodge)… you simply used the glows from the layer FX. Also, tried again from a new file, just can’t get that white, I can get white in their by tweaking the layer modes… but not looking like yours.
Maybe it’s the base color, should I use a less saturated orange/yellow, less saturated closer to a white/orange/yellow?
Make sure the blend mode of the inner glow is set to colour dodge and the opacity of the effect is 100% (not of the layer, but the effect, found immediately below the blend mode) From there, play with the size and range. You can even adjust the ranges via by clicking on the thumbnail in the "contour" setting and making a custom curve (or picking one from the drop-down tab).
I started with a very saturated red-orange (although a lot of that got toned down once the smudges turned them partially transparent in most places, but the base colours are bright and saturated). The layers were set to normal, but then I was using orange against a black background so it works fine that way. Depending on the background you have, if you want it to glow over top of it, you may have to set your layer to screen, colour dodge, or one of the other brightening modes.
Peter,
Are you on DeviantArt, or do you have a blog? Could you email me at
Thanks so much, especially for showing us the tricks of the trade.
Could you email me at skoolbus77 at gmail dot com
please don’t take this discussion off list! this is exactly the kind of thing that makes this forum so valuable!!!
