In photoshop and affinity photo, you can use layer styles to give a fire like coloring to smoke brushes.
To boost your design assets with smoke brushes, you can check out my packages on the following page >> https://www.xresch.com/design-products/smoke-brushes/
Photoshop
Step 1: Smoke on Solid Color Layer
I prefer to use Solid Color Layers instead of regular transparent layers, as you can adjustments later you cannot achieve with transparent layers, like changing the contrast.
- Create a Black background layer.
- Create a new solid color layer using “Menu >> Layer >> New Fill Layer >> Solid Color…”. Choose pure white as the color.
- Select the mask and press “Ctrl+I” to hide.
- Use a smoke brush with white color on the mask to create some smoke.


Step 2: Adding the Layer Styles
Double click the smoke layer to open the layer style and add the following styles:
Inner Shadow with color #470606:

Inner glow with color #ffa200:

Satin with color #ffa442:

Outer Glow with color #ff0000:

The Result in Photoshop
Using the above styles you will end up with a nice and warm effect:

Affinity Photo
Step 1: Smoke on Black Background
- Create a Black background layer.
- Create a new layer and paint a smoke brush with white color on the layer.


Step 2: Adding the Layer Styles
Select the smoke layer and click the “fx” symbol to open the Layer Effects.

Add the following styles.
Inner Shadow with color #410000:

Outer Glow with color #FF0000 :

Inner Glow with color #FFFF17:

The Result in Affinity
Using the above styles you will end up with a nice and warm effect:

[…] Here are various ways how you can enhance a fire effect I have explained in the tutorial Fire Effect: Smoke Brushes and Layer Styles. […]
[…] Fire Effect: Smoke Brushes and Layer Styles […]
The above settings for Photo do not work right unless you set the overall layer to average in version 1.7.1 and in current Beta.
[…] image, your have found yourself the right tutorial! Here I will show you how you can apply my smoke and layer styles combination to a colored image. I will use Affinity Photo for this tutorial, but the same process can be done […]
How does this work in GIMP? I can’t even find any of your brushes to be white in colour :/
Gimp needs a different approach.
Brushes in Gimp are not based on alpha values but are actually based on colors.
To get a white smoke, use a brush on an empty layer and invert the colors.
Afterwards use a gradient map as shown in the following post:
https://www.xresch.com/fire-effect-smoke-brushes-gradient-map-504/
Thank you for your reply, you are a genius 🙂 Thank you so much! If you had a full Gimp course, I’d consider buying it!
Thank you very much for the positive feedbacj, you’re are very welcome. 🙂