Well, first of all, hi everyone! Im new to the forums, and this is my first tutorial on this forum .
Ok, so lets start
Make a new document, I'll use 500*500 pixels.
To make a new document go File->New... (put your settings, click ok)
Click "D" to reset forerground and background color, and click Alt + Backspace to fill your Background color with black, you should have this by now:

Make a new layer by going Layer->New Layer... by clicking make a new layer icon in layers tab.
Select the pen tool, and make a selection that will be used as explosion. This is what I came up with:

Ok, now to make that smoother, we will select Convert Point Tool pen tab.
Now, click, hold and drag points of your explosion selection and drag them to make them smooth, you should have something like this:

If you think there is extra points, you can always select Delete Anchot Point Tool from pen tab, or if you think you didnt set a point right,
there is no need to delete a point, but while having Convert Point Tool selected hold CTRL button and drag a point.
Ok, now lets feather this selection and fill it. Right click on selection layer and click Rasterize Type. Now CTRL+click selection layer
to select it, click delete button, or go Edit->Clear, now go Select->Feather. Put it about 20-30 pixels.
Now go Filter->Render->Clouds. Select the brush tool with a very soft edge, from 0 to 20 percent of hardness, take black color
and set opacity to 25 percent. Now paint some parts of explosion, I mainly paint upper left or upper right corner, to make it a bit 3D-ish.

!!! This step is not necessary but will make the final effect more realistic !!!
Ok, now lets make another layer, and with new layer selected CTRL+click on our explosion selection layer, then hold "ALT" key, and deselect
more then half upper part of selection, then go Select->Modify->Contract to make selection smaller, use about 10-15 pixels, then go
Select->Feather and give it about 10 pixels, go Filter->Render->Clouds, and make it bright by going Image->Adjustments->Levels.
You will see 3 sliders, slide the one that is on the far right, and keep slighting it on the left, till you get something like this

Ok, now lets add some practicles in the background.
Make a new layer, and place it below both layers we created, fill it with black, by clicking "D" to reset the colors if they arent, and cliking
Alt+Backspace, to fill the layer with black. Go Filter->Noise->Add Noise...
Amount : 25
Distribution : Gaussian
Monochromatic Checked.
Now go Filter->Blur->Motion Blur
90° degrees
Distance: 15
Put the opacity of the noise layer to about 70 - 80, then go Edit->Free Transform, or click CTRL+T, and rotate the layer a bit to the left, and move it a bit to the left, so you have this:

Now select the eraser tool, and put its hardness to 0 and erase everything on the right side of the exlposion, and on the left side erase all corners, and else that is not close to explosion, and you will have something like this:

Now duplicate noise layer, by cliking CTRL+J or by going to Edit->Duplicate. Click CTRL+T then right click and flip vertical. Now move the layer on the right side, and delete all thats on the left side of exlposion click CTRL+E to merge 2 noise layer together, and you will have this:

Now select the top layer and click CTRL+E two times, to merge 3 layers we have, and go Image->Adjustments->Color Balance:
Check Preserve Luminosity box, and add a nice color. I usually play with positive cyans/reds and negative yellow/blues.
Well, what can I say? Congratulations, you made a nice explosion effect in Photoshop!
This is my final result:

And this is a little test how would it look in a picture, I added some little smoke on this one, not the best, but Im sure some of you will do much better :


Well, thats it!
If you liked this tutorial, please register to forum, and post results you got by reading this tutorial please.

-Emil

Hiya Emil! Welcome to 13dots!!

Great tutorial. That's for adding it.

Looks great, Emil.
Very well explained and excelent result.
Thank you for adding this

Hello Emil, thankyou for adding this tutorial but I have a question about

You say you have just added a smoke effect but yet the explosion looks so much different to your tutorial, can you please explain how you obtained the explosion to look like that please.

Hey, I fixed the links, I added PS albums in my photobucket account, so images were off till now so I cant see what picture you were talking about, but I'm pretty sure you talked about the last one.
I used same explosion effect from final results, I added a new layer in the other picture, imported explosion as a layer, removed black, positioned it, and to make the top go left and right, I used the Warp transform tool, under free transform. You know CTRL+T, right click Warp, and then I was dragging some vertexes to get that effect .


Anyone got some results ?? ^^

-Emil

Ahh ok thankyou, I will add your images to 13dots later and crop them ok so you won't have to worry about photobucket.

Ok, cool, thanks. Anyways, cropping..
What resolution should I use, I am currently making another tutorial, so.. I'm wondering what resolution should they be in?? I will currently leave them 800*600, I can change them later though.

-Emil

800x600 is good, you can attach the images directly into your topics as we allow multiple image attachments K and no need to screenshot the entire Photoshop window.

Nice tutorial. Thanks for adding.

Nice tutorial!

i need this! many thanks!