This tutorial will show you how to add smoke or fog to any section of an image by creating a selection and putting it on a new layer to use as the base layer in Eye Candy 6. For a review of Eye Candy 6, click on the name.

I got this idea from the Alien Skin Video Text and Selection Filters by Terence Tay. It is a modification of his use of selections. There are a lot of other good tutorials on the Alien Skin website for their different plug-ins.

This is a basic image I created in Vue 8 Infinite to use to create multiple images in Photoshop CS4. In this version, I first wanted to add a foggy feeling to the mid section of the image.

The following outlines the steps and settings I used to accomplish this. The first method uses the selection and the whole image. The second method describes how to accomplish this with the selection on a separate layer in Photoshop. Both have their own strengths. The former allows you to see how it will look in the final image. The second allows for more flexibility later in Photoshop. The method described in the "steps" is the first method where I used the selection on the background layer and kept it active.

Step 1 - Click on the Quick Mask button on the left toolbar in Photoshop. Then with your brush (here I used a size of 5 pixels) draw a line where you want the fog to be.

Step 2 - Click on the Quick Mask button again to put it into regular mode so that you have the marching ants. Depending on how Photoshop is set up, for the line to be the selection, you might have to go to: Select/Inverse from the top Photoshop toolbar.

Step 3 - With the selection active, go to Filters and access Eye Candy 6: Text & Selection and Smoke.

Step 4 - Choose "Wispy- Small" and "Expanding Breeze."

Step 5 - You will make adjustments to this filter. Below are the ones I made to get this effect. Some things are import to note: It is necessary to check the Create Output in New Layer.... box so that you can manipulate the opacity of that layer once you are finished using the filter. If the effect is not exactly what you want, you can click the Random Seed button.

Step 6 - I made the smoke color white.

The following image shows where the selection was made and the smoke around it.

Once in Photoshop, you will have two layers. The top one will contain the image and the smoke. I modified the opacity of that layer further.

You can use selections in other ways. For example, you can put the selection on a separate layer in Photoshop (Layer 1).

With Layer 1 selected, open Eye Candy 6: Text & Selection and Smoke. You will only see that layer with that selection in Eye Candy.

Here is the resultant image in Photoshop keeping the opacity of the smoke 100%.

Below I lowered the smoke layer opacity to 26%.

Since the smoke was white, it was hard to control the opacity in Eye Candy 6 because it faded out too much because of the transparent background. To solve that problem I could have changed the working background in Eye Candy 6 in Preferences to Black Matte. Then I could regulate the opacity of the smoke before exiting from the plug-in because the change would be more visible. The Black Matte background will not show up in Photoshop. The background will be transparent as in the above examples.

As you can see, there are many ways to use selections with Eye Candy 6. This is a very flexible plug-in with many opportunities for experimentation.