Playing With Fire in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we will create a nice fire effect (not a font fire effect like many fire tutorials in the net) applicable for any object. Let's start new:

1. Assume that we have two layers, one is a white background and the other is object layer (in this case I use Avatech logo). The objective is to make the logo burnt with fire.
   
   
2. Create a new layer above the logo layer. Then draw random lines up and down using Soft Brush Tool (B), don't forget to adjust the brush size (I used 45px) and the opacity to 100%. Use dark red colour for the background (I used #C10909 colour) and bright red colour as the foreground (#FF0E0E). See image below for example:
   
   
3. Now set the brush size to smaller one (I used 35px) and draw dark orange lines (#FE830E), this time bottom up. Then soften the fire by using a bright orange colour (#FED40E) with bigger brush size (I used 100px) and opacity around 30%. The result is image below:
   
   
4. Using Dodge Tool (O), adjust the brush size to mid-small (I used around 35px), set the Range to Midtones and set the Exposure to around 70%. Highlight the areas which need to be brightened. See example below:
   
   
5. Now we will make the fire looks wavy, we do this by Filter > Liquify. Use Forward Warp Tool (W) then adjust the brush size to around 40 and pressure to 40. Now use your imagination to make the fire looks more realistic. You might want to refine the details of your image by reducing the brush size to around 25 and set the lower pressure (around 30).
   
   
6. Liquify is very good to create wavy look to your image, however it may introduce some inaccuracies, you can clean this unwanted effect by using Smudge Tool (R). Set the brush size to mid-small (around 30px) and set the Strength around 50%.
   
   
7. Now duplicate the fire layer and move the duplicated layer below the object layer. On the bottom layer, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius around 30 to 50. Then using Smudge Tool, again create a fire trail over the blurred fire layer. Improvise yourself with the brush size this time.
   
   
8. You might want to do some finishing to this fire effect by using the Dodge Tool again and brighten the fire. Now you've learnt how to create a fire without any risk!
   
   Note that this fire effect looked even better if you combine it with dark background like image above.