timFX

Animated Fire

This tutorial was made for Adobe Photoshop CS2 & Adobe ImageReady CS2

Result:

1. Open a new project in Photoshop (Press Ctrl + n). I made mine 400x400 pixels. You can make yours bigger, but for a decent finished product you don't want too much smaller than this.

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2. Set your Background/Foreground colors to default (Press d).

3. Go to Filter>Render>Clouds. Press Ctrl+f until you get some decent looking clouds.

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4. Go to Filter>Render>Difference Clouds. Press Ctrl+f 20 to 25 times untill you have something that looks like this. (I know it seems insane to press it that many times but its worth it.)

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5. Go to Image>Adjustments>Gradient Map. Click on the gradient.

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6. Make the Gradient go from Black to Dark Red to Yellow to White. Play with the colors and placement until you are happy with the overall look.

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7. This step is not necessary, thus I am not going to go into much detail. But, you can go to Filter>Liquify and play with the flames a little. I decided to try and make mine look more like lava this time, but you can make yours however.

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8. This is where we start to build the finished project! Open a new project in Photoshop (Ctrl + n). (Keep the other project open.) This time make it forum signature size. Mine will be 300x80 pixels.

9. Go to the first project and select the Move Tool (Press V). Then drag the flames you made right into the other project. Align it so that the Upper Left corner of the flame image is in the upper left hand corner of the sig. This leaves a majority of the flames hanging off the right and bottom of the signature project.

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10. This is where you want to add a border and text. Remember to make everything on new layers, DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ON THE FLAME LAYER. I am going to add a 2 px border, and a bar on the bottom with my name. I'm not going to spoon feed you this part cause i want you to be creative. Here's mine.

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11. Hit the Edit in ImageReady button, or press Shift + Ctrl + m.

12. Make sure you have the Animation window open. If not go to Window>Animation in the menu up top.

13. Duplicate the current frame.

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14. Make sure frame 2 is selected. Then select the flame layer in the Layers window.

15. Grab the Move Tool (Press V). Move the flame so that the lower right of the flame image is aligned with the lower right side of the signature.

16. Select the first frame in the Animation window, then press the tween button. Tween with the Next Frame. Frames to Add is 20. Layers should be All Layers, and Paramaters should have the Position box checked.

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[Click here for Image]

17. Go to File>Save Optimized As. Make sure you have Images Only (*.gif) selected then you're done!

This effect can also be applied to other things, such as smoke:

IF YOU HAVE ANY TROUBLE YOU CAN FIND SUPPORT IN THE FORUMS.

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