In this tutorial we’re going to create a very cool and realistic smoke effect.

Create some Shapes: I created some random shapes.

Apply a Gaussian blur on each shape

Using the liquify filter as follows:

You should now have something that resembles this:

Position the shapes.

Add some colors as follows:

Add a background color on the layer of the shape, otherwise the Hue/Saturation won’t work:

Creating a cloud behind the smoke

Set a feather with a high value, like 40 to 80, and after that apply the hue/saturation on the cloud too.

Adding a gradient to create an atmosphere.

The gradient will give atmosphere and more depth to the image.

The finished product!