Locomotive Smoke

[papabear]

I've been trying for some time to use Photoshop to generate billowy smoke to make model railroad locomotive photos more realistic. While I can find a number of tips on producing wispy smoke, such as that from a cigarette, I've found nothing on how to produce lots of smoke.

Does anyone have any ideas on the subject?

Thanks in advance.

[mistermonday]

Try making a rough selection of the area you want to fill with smoke and give it a large feather. Set your foreground & background colors to white and mid gray. Then Filter > Render > Clouds. Ctrl F to repeat the filter until you like the mix of white & gray. Modify the color swatches if you want the smoke to be darker or lighter. You can then mask, smudge or do a dozen other things to blend it in the way you like it, including changing the blending modes. That's just one suggestion. Other members may have other very different techniques.
Regards, Murray

[NYBOB]

You could try some smoke brushes,get some Here.

Bob

[Panpan]

Two other possibilities are to import the smoke from a photograph of a smoking train or to get a model locomotive with a smoke unit.

[Steve13]

Smoke units won't give you the effect he wants. Just not the same.

[0lBaldy]

papabear, Welcome to RetouchPRO Hope you enjoy your stay here and make lots of friends. Poke around, ask questions, have fun!

Using a combination of these three methods to make smoke from Bert Monroy should get you some excelent smoke coming out of your trains:

http://revision3.com/pixelperfect/volcano

http://revision3.com/pixelperfect/smokinggun

http://revision3.com/pixelperfect/fire

[papabear]

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody.

Murray - I tried rendering > clouds before, but never multiple times with feathering, so I'll give that a try as soon as I can.

Bob - I never knew there were such things as smoke brushes. I'm looking forward to playing with them, too

Baldy - Thanks for the links. I'll have a look at them tomorrow.

Gary