Smoke Text in Photoshop

For this tutorial, you will need an image of Smoke to use as “Background”, and Marhaban Font from FontBundles.

1 - In Photoshop, open the image you chose.

2 - Create a “New Layer” (Shift + Command/Control + N) and name it “Black”. Make sure that black is your “Foreground” color and fill the Layer with it (Option/Alt + Delete/Backspace).

3 - Select the “Type Tool” (T), choose your font (we used Marhaban) and type your text. Use white as “Fill” color.

4 - Select the “Black” and “Text” layers, right-click on top of their thumbnails and choose “Convert to Smart Object”.

5 - Go to Filter > Distort > Wave and use the following values. Check the “Preview” window and if you don’t like the result click the “Randomize” button a few times until you are happy. Take into account that the results are random so if you like the text is better to stop.

6 -Go to Filter > Distort > Twirl and use an “Angle” of -57°

7 - Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and use an “Angle” of 0° and a “Distance” of 100 Pixels.

8 - Change the “Blending Mode” of your Layer to “Color Dodge” and lower the “Fill” to 90%.

9 - Check out how your text looks against the “Smoke” and if necessary, double-click on top of a “Filter” and fix its values. In our case, we noticed that the “Motion Blur” was too much and reduced the “Distance” to 90 Pixels.

10 - Reduce the “Fill” a bit more (to 90%). Go to the “Adjustments Panel” and add a new “Color Lookup Adjustment Layer”, choose filmstock_50.3dl from the 3DLUT File option and lower the “Opacity” to 60%.

11 - Check out your work. Remember that since you are working on a “Smart Object” you can double-click on top of the image thumbnail and modify your text, etc.

by @lornacane