Photoshop: Abstract Fireworks

Smoke

For the smoke, start by creating a new layer, then grab your Elliptical Marquee Tool from the Tools Bar. Drag out an Ellipse that’s slightly larger than your fireworks.

When that’s set, set your foreground color to a slightly desaturated blue. I used #3d63a0. We don’t want the smoke to be too vibrant. When that’s done, head up to Filter > Render > Clouds.

At this point, it needs smoothing out. In your Layers Panel, add a Layer Mask using the Add Layer Mask button () at the bottom. Now, with your Brush Tool active, choose a nice large, soft brush.

Paint around the edges of this layer. This will hide and soften out the edges of the smoke layer.

When you’re happy with the shape, change the Blend Mode of this layer to Screen, decrease the Opacity to around 40%, and drag the layer behind the fireworks layer.

One more layer to go! Let’s add some sparkles. Make sure to create another new layer, this time, above your fireworks layer. Grab your Brush Tool one more time, and if you’re Brush Panel is not still visible, activate it again under the Window menu.

Under Brush Tip Shape, decrease the Size to 9, and increase the Spacing to 300%.

Now in Shape Dynamics, make sure Size Jitter is at 100%.

And finally, under Scattering, turn on Both Axes, crank the Scatter to 1000%, and decrease the Count to 1.

From here, set your foreground color to white, then brush on top and around the fireworks. This will scatter some white dots around the design.

When you’re happy with the amount of dots, we need to add some glow to them. Instead of going through more Layer Styles, we’re just going to use the same Styles that we used on our fireworks. In your Layers Panel, right click on the fireworks layer, and choose Copy Layer Style.

Now right click on your new layer containing the dots, and Paste Layer Style. If you’re happy with the way it looks, you can leave it be. I chose to decrease the Opacity to around 50% to blend it in slightly.

And that’s that! Again, we aren’t going for a 100% realistic look, but more towards an abstract look for these fireworks. Hopefully this gives you a starting point for your own designs.

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