You could also use the same technique for a fireball-thowing mage in a fantasy work, a real-world magician or someone who’s just been very unlucky near a camp fire. Sasso will talk you through honing your use of layers, tweaking the same image several times and layering up the central model. You’ll use layer styles and adjustment layers to build up effects and achieve a subtle, polished finish. Sasso also has plenty of tips on how to seamlessly blend stock photography, using the Warp tool, simple Photoshop effects, and some layer masks. Throughout the tutorial, you’ll be subtly applying blending modes until you reach the impressive effect shown above. All the images you’ll need can be bought at a low cost from Shutterstock, or you can easily substitute your own photos if you’d prefer. We’ve used Adobe Photoshop to complete this process, which is available separately or as part of Adobe Creative Cloud. Some students are eligible for an extended free trial of Creative Cloud, and there are also ways to get Photoshop for free. For the colours, use orange and a very dark orange; set the style to Radial and keep the scale at 100%. Move the gradient so the lighter part is on top of the model’s hand.
