How to Make Coffee Steam in Fireworks

Imagine spending an entire day to produce the perfect photograph of a cup of coffee. You show it to the client, and he isn't happy because it isn't steaming. You could spend the money for another photo shoot or you could make the coffee steam in Fireworks. All you need is 5 minutes and a little Fireworks savvy.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Open the photo in Fireworks. Go to the Layers palette and create a new bitmap layer above the coffee photo layer.

2. Select the paintbrush tool and paint your steam. Make white the foreground color and paint with a large soft brush (set the "Edge" value to 70 or higher in the Properties palette).

3. Use the background eraser tool to paint holes at random in the middle of the steam. Choose the round shape in the properties palette, and make the brush about 12 pixels wide with an edge setting of 50.

4. Make sure the steam layer is active in the Layers palette and click on the "Add Filter" button in the Properties palette (it will be a "+" sign). A list of filter categories will appear.

5. Apply the "Motion Blur" filter from the Blur submenu. Set the angle to "30" and the distance to "60." If you don't like the effect, you can adjust the settings later (adjust the distance to simulate the amount of diffusion and the angle to change the diffusion direction). You can also add a Gaussian Blur to compound the diffusion effect.

6. Choose "Overlay" from the blend modes in the Layers palette. The steam will now fade into the background. Reduce the opacity to 60 to 75 percent.

7. Copy the layer and position it father up above the cup. Stretch and rotate the shape and reduce the opacity by an additional 25 percent. This will extend the steam effect.

Tips & Warnings

• You can also use the pen tool to create your steam shape. The path tool will give you far more control over your edges. When you're finished, convert the object to a bitmap object and proceed with the rest of the effects.