For a long time, when I ran across images that had light and fire effects, my mind was completely blown. How in the world were these Photoshop Artists and Photographers making an object look like it was fully engulfed in flames when it was actually all done in post? I knew the artists creating it were taking images of real fire and somehow they were using them to create the effect but when I did it? UGH. It was awful and chunky and weird. I was trying to cut out the flames with the lasso tool and mask out the parts I didn’t want and I was failing at this effect miserably. I eventually decided they were just better at masking than I was. Then one day I discovered blending modes and buddy it was a whole new world! The proverbial light bulb came on! All the light and fire effects I had seen up to this point were demystified. I realized they are not masking it. They are using a blending mode to take out the dark pixels and leave the light ones. All the sudden I could cut flames out of an image and with a simple blending mode create a fire where there was no fire. LAAHHH!!! This is the single biggest creative stride I’ve ever taken. I went from being stuck with masks and brushes to utilizing 20 new tools in PS literally over night. I decided that today would be a perfect day to introduce you to my new Photoshop Foundations blog series on the topic of blending modes. I chose Stock Saturday for a reason. In order to do a fire effect you really need good stock images. By doing this on Stock Saturday, you have access to my own stock images AND you get some good inspiration to boot! This should get you off and running with everything you need to create your own fire effects… Like now… Right this minute. All of these stock fire images are from my personal stock library. They are all creative commons attribution license. (That means you can use them for anything you want, even commercial stuff but you can’t steal them as your own and try to sell them.) To download the stock just click on the image and it will take you to my fire stock gallery on DeviantArt.com. There are plenty of fire stock images to get you off and running… 
Now for the good stuff… let’s learn how to uses this gems! For this example we are going to light this match using an awesome blending mode called “Screen”. Now, I have seen a lot of tutorials on blending modes. I was scared to death of them. Everybody who taught them talked about algorithms and pixels and values and blah… blah… blah… I kept putting off using them because of how it was taught. One day I saw someone actually DO something with a blending mode and I finally got it. The key blending mode for lighting effects in PS is “Screen”. I’ll just give it to you straight. It takes out dark pixel values and leaves the lighter ones. That’s it. No complicated explanations. There is no need to go any further. Now let me show you how that works. Here we have a stock image of a match (you can find this stock image here…thank you LifeGoesOnStock for helping us share the world of blending modes.)
The first thing you want to do is find a stock image with a flame shape you would like to use. Since this is not a huge torch but a small match flame I think using one of the single flame tiki torches will work best. I chose this stock image to use…
Open the image in PS and use the lasso tool to select out the portion of the image you would like to use… 
Now copy and paste this selection into your match image and position it where you would like to apply it… (Short Cut for copy and paste: Control+C, Control+V) At this point you can warp, distort, rotate – whatever you need to do to give the flame the shape that feels right to you. Trust your gut. (You will hear me say that a lot because that is your best resource for creating a realistic edit. Trust your own experience with the world. You are an expert at judging this because you have been viewing the real world since birth. :-))
Now.. the key to making this work is the amazing, cool blending mode called “Screen”.
This blending mode will take this flame and the really dark pixels will disappear and all the light pixels will stay put. You will notice the light pixels will even appear as if they are glowing… (ohhhh glow… Hmm… I smell another effect here… but more on that in another tutorial).
Here is what you get!
Ta Dah! You are probably thinking, “Wait a minute. That doesn’t look right.” You are correct. Let me explain what is happening. The light pixels are out numbering the dark ones at this point. That is why most of the background around the flame didn’t disappear. Remember this blending mode only takes out the darker pixels. You can change how much of this image is dark and how much is light using a levels adjustment layer… Learning this trick is important. You will probably run into something like this every single time you try this effect. No stock is perfect out of the gate. Select the flame layer and apply a levels adjustment layer and clip it to the flame layer. (The clip icon is at the bottom on the levels pallet. Where you see the green arrow). When you clip this it will only affect the levels on the layer it is clipped to. You don’t want to affect the entire image. Just the flame.
Here is the image and levels before we make our adjustments…
Here is what happens when we move the sliders and begin to affect how much of the flame is considered dark pixels and how much of the flame is considered light…
NOW were cookin’! By just moving the sliders you can change the pixel values and control how much of the flame is visible and what pixels are filtered out by the blending mode. This is really cool. By using the levels adjustments and masks you can layer flames over flames and build it up to a very realistic looking flame. Here is what it looks like when I add another flame into the mix. Let’s try this one…
All these fire stock images are on my stock gallery on deviantart.com. Open the image, select the portion of the image you want and copy and past it into your match file…
Change the blending mode of this layer to “Screen” and you have this…
Now use the same levels adjustment layer and clip it to your flame layer to perfect the screen blending mode effect…
You can keep doing this, using warp transformations, perspective transformations, layer flames on top of flames, use masks, add a separate glow effect on top of it… etc.. get the flame to look any way you like… Now go light a fire!
Keep learning and keep #SharingItForward!
Caroline
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Want to contribute? Shoot me an email! rutland.caroline@gmail.com – I’m always looking for like-minded artists who are willing to share what they have learned. If it is something we have not covered before I will share it on this blog, with a link back to your portfolio, website and social media! Up-Coming Workshops & Speaking Engagements: Conceptual Portraiture Workshop | Nashville, TN | June 20-21, 2015
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