QUICK TIP
An easy way to enhance your fire elements even further is to duplicate the layer. After that add a Gaussian Blur with a radius of about 30 to give your fire elements a nice soft glow. Use this on flames as well as sparks.
14 ENHANCE THE FLAME’S GLOW ON THE BODY
Add a blank layer above your subject. Grab a Soft brush, change the Opacity to around 20% and make it orange. Take your brush and paint over your subject where the light from the fire should be hitting them. Clip the layer to your model layer so it only affects that. Turn your blending mode to Color. Use the procedure from Step 9 to make it only affect the highlights. Add a layer mask and mask out any areas that shouldn’t have the glow from the fire.
15 FINAL COLOUR GRADING
First add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer. Choose the Black and White With Green preset. You will notice this turns your image black and white. You want to use this adjustment for some desaturation so bring the Opacity down to 15%. Next add a Color Balance adjustment layer.
The Color Balance adjustments will vary from image to image so play around with them to get the look you want. For this image the Shadows and Midtones were pushed towards the cyan and blue tones, while the Highlights were pushed towards the red and yellow tones.
13 ADD REAL FIRE ELEMENTS AND SMOKE
Although you are using Render Flame to create custom fire elements, it’s hard to beat the real thing. For the main fireball, use a real photo of fire on a black background. Put the fire on top of the layer you want it to be over and turn the blending mode to Screen. On you keyboard hold down Cmd/Ctrl+T. This will allow you to transform and size your flame. Follow the same steps to add fog and smoke. A great smoke and fog package can be bought at www.phlearn.com. Use a Levels adjustment layer to adjust the amount of fog or smoke.
12 CREATE SPARKS
To create sparks you will reverse the process a little. Create a new layer and grab a Hard Round brush set at 8 pixels. Start drawing very small dots and dashes about the size of sparks.
Use the Magic Wand tool to select the negative space of the layer then inverse the selection. Next go to your Paths panel then click the Make Work Path from Selection icon. Follow the procedure from Step 10 and make sure to change your blending mode to Screen. Add a Motion Blur to give the sparks some motion.
MASTER RENDER FLAME
16 SHARPEN
Save your PSD. Once you have saved it select Layer>Flatten Image. Make a duplicate copy of the flattened image by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+J. Select your top layer. Next select Filter>Sharpen> Unsharp Mask.Adjust the sliders as needed based on file size. While still on the top layer, select Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All. You can then use a Soft brush set to black to remove the sharpening from any areas you don’t want it. You can also use the opacity to pull down the sharpening over the entire image.
17 ADD GRAIN
Lastly add grain. Create a new layer above your sharpened image. Hold down Shift and click Delete. Choose Fill with 50% Gray. Change the blending mode of this layer to Soft Light. Next select Filter>Noise>Add Noise. The size of your image will determine the amount you use. Choose Uniform and leave Monochromatic unselected.Once you apply, hold down Cmd/Ctrl+U. Then pull down the Saturation to -85%. Leaving a little colour in the grain will make it look more natural. Make sure to do this step at full zoom. You can adjust the opacity if it feels like it’s too much. Save your PSD with all layers intact.
18 SAVE IT
You can save the image several different ways depending on its use. If you are going to use a good quality printing lab you can leave the image in Adobe RGB and select File>Save As. Save the file as a JPEG or TIFF. If you are planning on using a low-end printer or saving for online use you want to convert to SRGB.Select Edit>Convert to Profile. Choose Working RGB. Save it the same way as before. For online use it’s good to scale it down before saving. Select
File>Automate>Fit Image. Do a width of 2048 pixels and a height of 2048 pixels.
Save it as a JPEG, and put it in a separate folder so you know it’s for online use.
VISUAL HELP
Sometimes techniques like Render Flame are hard to grasp in written form. A video or visual explanation can sometimes help. Brendon Cawood has created a video tutorial to go along with the Render Flame portion of this tutorial. You can find it by going to his website www.brandoncawood.com and clicking on the video tutorials page. You will find videos that go into further depth explaining how to incorporate the fire elements as well as colour grading.