Photographing Smoke

[Saralonde]

Originally Posted by alenz

very nice and quite sensual with color...my next experiment.
I am intrigued though...I shoot with an XT and I thought it had a setting for shooting in
single color as an option....so why the color gel?
This question is basically directed to SARAlonde...I was puzzled by your post on using the
gel for the smoke shot.

The gels are pieces of clear plastic papers about 1 x 3 inches.


I used them on my speedlite and just flipped down the diffuser to hold it in place.


They were free from Rosco.

[snapdragon]

Originally Posted by Sime™

Heh.. it may work.. you never know

I don't think so , but heh.........,the proof will be in the photo

[filemanager]

Originally Posted by Saralonde

The gels are pieces of clear plastic papers about 1 x 3 inches.


I used them on my speedlite and just flipped down the diffuser to hold it in place.


They were free from Rosco.

I got mine today!!

If you used your flash during the smoke pictures, where was the flash pointed? ie - did you bounce it off the ceiling, or was it pointing directly at the smoke?

[Manda]

Here's my New Years attempt.



The smoke was cropped.

I duplicated the layer and did a vertical flip to make a mirror image.

I don't have a flash yet so I used the gradient tool in PS set to overlay at 40% opacity to create the colours.

I used the set up from the magazine Digital Camera World Jan 08.

[josealb]

I didnt think incense smoke could look that good actualy hehe. Very nice post processing. Could you post the picture without post process?

[stoavio]

Great shot! I'll have to try that.

[Liz Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Saralonde

This turned out really nice, Nicole. When I tried this last January, my set up was similar. The differences: I used my macro lens and a colored gel on my flash. If any one is interested in the free gels, here's a link. Of course, this will leave it one color, rather than the multi-color Nic posted.

Free gels rock, especially for the starving student

[cheasie]

i was wondering how people did this on flickr...how do yall setup the halogen light?

[cjc3406]

Ok maybe I'm just Photoshop illiterate but I can NOT figure out how to get the smoke to change all those cool colors. I change the color alittle but the colors don't flow and the colors aren't as bright as yours...HELP please. I'm working in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0.

[Liz Caldwell]

I use the burn tool to make the unwanted wisp dissapear, then use the "color variations" tool to change the color. I have PhotoShop Elements, which is the dumbed down version, but I believe they have a similar tool in the regular versions. also, you could try playing with the levels for the image to change the color.

Here's one of mine