Hi! I'm back and I have search for "how to make realistic flames", and I found lots of them, but they are quite unnatural, and some of them use clouds to create flames.... And that's not Healthy, as we all knew using clouds will give you a random pattern and we don't want that, specially for those who wants to achieve a certain flow. and thats one reason why we need to learn how to make flames with full control And  burning effects.

Burning effects is in a form of different types it depends on the object, it might be a metal, a flesh, woods or plastics. And for this tutorial I will be sharing how to make a realistic burning effect on woods.

I won't require you to learn how to use a pen tool or other sophisticated tool on your Arsenal ^___^

But I required you to at least try this 2 tutorials before mine.
Realistic flame on phtoshoptalent.com

Candle-or-Gas-Flame photoshoptalent.com

those tutorials lacks professionalism but it does have a great content on learning how it works (2 thumbs up), I want you to learn the basic first coz I will be explaining some important things about blending modes.

Before we start I want to thank the owner of this free stock photo that we will be using in this tutorial it came from Mr.Vampatmidnight

He is a member of PST and I am too, and I'm glad he got me a perfect subject for this tutorial.

Ok lets start ^___^

First, open our subject And Duplicate it [Ctrl J] and make a new layer [Ctrl Shift Alt N]. you now have 3 layers, the original image, the duplicated image and a blank layer.

Grab your brush tool, use the [air brush] and on that empty layer start creating some black Dots on that wood. As much as possible make it smaller.

Then go to Filter > blur > Gaussian blur Set it to at least 10pixel... it's almost nothing but don't be afraid photoshop can see through it.

Open a new layer just underneath and fill it with white.

Lower it's opacity until you can see though the woods.

Now select our layer where it contains our blur dots. And go to Filter > liquefy and make it flow like a flame depends on your taste.

There are 2 reasons why we add a white layer underneath, the first reason is for you to see on to those black dots using liquefy ...  it is difficult to see what we are trying to liquefy if it's almost invincible to our naked eye. I'll tell the 2nd reason later. ^^

ok now set the layer which is filled with white to 100% opacity, and we will now change those black flame or shall we say "smokes" ^^ to a real orange flames, you knew it could be done using colorize as lots of tutorials told you ^^

yes it can, but why don't you try it then, if it changes I would give you a cup of coffee ^^ press [Ctrl U] and try to set them out.

yeah thats right! I know it wont... . . coz colorize won't work with no background. As of now our black flame has transparent background, We need to merge him with our white layer, so select the 2 layer and then press [Ctrl E].

That's the second reason why we made a white background on purpose.

and Also like other tutorials, we are going to use colorize then set it's blending modes to linear dodge. . . . . but before we do that you need to learn that linear dodge won't work on white background, it will change the color by using colorize but it wont blend on linear dodge.

Take note that linear dodge always ignores black [#000000] but it is sticky on whites [#ffffff]

So in order to fix that we must invert the flame layer by hitting [Ctrl I]

Now hit [Ctrl U] and check those colorize at the bottom right corner. And set it to [0,100,0].

Then duplicate and apply another colorize with. [45,100,0]

Then set the blending modes of those 2 layers into linear dodge.

You could also make a blue flame if you want to, like this one by applying colorize [212,100,0] respectively. Just play around those colorize.

Ok back on our original orange flames ^^. Create a new layer and we will call it lightburns this will contain lightburns on wood. Set its blending modes to linear dodge and set the color of your foreground color to [bd7200]

Also set you brush opacity to 65%. And start adding lightburns, this is where you add more brightness on to those burning area.

now we will finally make the burned effects on those woods.
Make a new layer, we will call it burned effects. And set a stroke to 1px, [inside], [overlay] with a color of [a85b52]

Also set the blending mode of our layer to overlay.

Now get your brush tool [air brush]. Hit [D] to reset the color of your foreground and background. Now start adding burned effects. ^^ the effect can be obtained by re-applying stroke number of times like painting.

Now for the final step we would be applying some ripple effects to make it look more realistic and to add an impression of a very hot temperature.

select the duplicated image, and apply Filter > distort > ripple. The amount depends on the perspective of your image.

Then after applying ripple effect, we will be creating a mask..

Select your mask, then hit [D] to reset your palette and then hit [Ctrl Del] to fill it with you background color which is black. (Be sure your background layer is visible)
Then grab your brush tool [airbrush], then apply masking.
We only need to apply ripple effects near the flames.

Then that's it you have your burning effects ^^ I hope you enjoy my tutorial.