How to make a specific effect?

[AkiraSieghart]

Hello everyone. I'm relatively new here and I war just wondering something. I found this background a while ago and I always wanted to make an effect as close as possible to the mist/energy/fire around the sphere. Can anyone help me out?

 

[kgainez]

I would tell you to use the smudge tool in photoshop...create a layer of maybe like clouds or something, shape it up and then smudge it. would prolly work great with a tablet

 

[Petit Photoshopper]

yeah, and for the glowy effect they probably used the layer mode 'screen'. (the drop-down menu in your layers tab that says 'normal' by default). I would have at least three layers. 1: the base image that you smudged, with the layer mode set to 'normal' 2: a copy of the smudged image over itself, with the layer mode set to 'screen' 3: a copy of smudged layer with a gaussian blur applied to it, layer mode set to 'screen'.