Flame / Fire / Tribal Brushes for Photoshop, Elements and others

Photoshop brushes tutorial - Metal brushes

1) Layer > New Layer

2) Set foreground tool box color to black

3) Window > styles and select a metal style

4) Apply brush stroke to layer

5) Layer > flattern

6) Layer > New layer

7) Apply same metallic style

8) Apply brush strokes

9) Repeat applying different metallic blobs across image

10) apply effects in between applying metallic layers

11) The metallic layers - recolor using the color overly in the layer style dialog

How can I use Photoshop brushes across color channels ?

The brushes (flame, fire as well as any other brushes) can be applied to all the color channels in an image in one single go, such as all the RGB channels.

You can also apply the brush stroke to the red channel and then to the green channel etc as well as cyan / magenta etc channels if in CMYK color mode.

You can position the designs shifted or perhaps different color effects to the brush stroke etc before re-combining the channels into a single RGB image.

Using flame brushes as floaters / objects in Photoshop

One feature that baffles me with Photoshop - a lack of a floater or library of standard images or objects.

You can always use Adobe Bridge as a way around this lack. Another alternative approach is to use Illustrator as a store of designs (such as keeping the flame brush strokes as a symbol in Illustrator - this does depend on having Illustrator)

Layers are also another way.

The example below was created by using a single brush flame stroke to a new layer - the flame was further modified by a style effect / bevel / shadow.

The layers are then duplicated repeatedly and moved across the image - you can also use the Photoshop layer comp palette to save the positions of the flame brushes and by clicking saved comps you can create many different layouts of flame designs. The flame brushes used as from pack 134. Added: december 30th 2011