Tutorial: How to make a fireball.

As you probably already knew there is lots of tutorials on the web that concerns fire. This is yet another one, but instead of showing you how to add flames to a text and so on, this tutorial will show you how to make a fireball or comet.

Create a new document 300x300 pixels, and make the background black. Create a new layer and name it "Red". Make a new oval selection with the circle marquee tool. Make the selection on the middle and to the right like I have done here. Fill the selection with white. Deselect.
Next go to Filter > Stylize > Wind Method: Wind Direction: From the right Repeat this step two times more by hitting "Ctrl + F".
Now select the Smudge Tool and choose a fuzzy brush around size 30. Now it is time to make the flames. Start smudging from the right to the left and try to nudge the mouse slightly up and down to make it look more like flames. Finish it by smudging from the left to the right, try to get a few grey strokes onto the lagre white areas.
Make a new layer and name it "Yellow". Hold down "Ctrl" and click the "Red" layer to make a selection of it. Press "D" to reset the colors. With the "Yellow" layer selected go to Filter > Render > Clouds.
With the "Yellow" layer still selected go to Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow. Fill in the settings as shown below. If you want the the ball to glow even more just change the size to a higher value.
Make a new layer directly under the "Yellow" layer and fill it with black. Select the "Yellow" layer and press "Ctrl + E" to merge it with the new black layer. Rename this layer to "Yellow" once again and make it invisible for now.
Next select the "Red" layer and press "Ctrl + E" to merge it with the "Background" layer. With the "Background" layer now selected go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation Follow these settings. Hue: 20 Saturation: 50 Lightness: 0 Dont forget to check Colorize. Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Choose 2.0 pixel radius.
Next select the "Yellow" layer. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation Follow these settings. Hue: 40 Saturation: 50 Lightness: -20 Dont forget to check Colorize.
Now you are alomst finished. The only thing left to do is to change the mode of the "Yellow" layer to Linear Dodge. Thats it, enjoy.

For more Photoshop tutorials, please visit my website at www.embrazer.com.

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