: Creating a Smoke Effect I am dipping my toes into graphic design. I recently saw the commercial in this tweet. In that tweet, something like PowerPoint is used at 3 seconds in and again at

@Moriarity648

The example you linked to is a video, but I assume since you mentioned "graphic design", you don't actually mean a video.

You can create similar effects using almost any decent raster image editor which supports layers. GIMP(dot)org is free, so here's an answer based on using that software.

Find or take a photo of some smoke, perhaps something like this:



In GIMP, Click File > New to set up a new document.
Set the foreground and background colours (the colours of your gradient) as required, by clicking on the foreground and background colour squares under the toolbar.
Use the Gradient tool to make a gradient, by clicking and dragging on the image from one corner to the other.
Click File > Open as Layers and select and open the smoke image. Resize or reposition as necessary using the Scale Tool and Move Tool.
Set the layer mode of the smoke image layer to "Screen" and lower the opacity until you get the effect you want. In my example below, around 47% opacity.
Then type some text using the Text Tool.


Example using GIMP




To export the image in a viewable image format, click File > Export As - choose a file format such as JPEG or PNG if you want to share it on the web. Save your work using File > Save As if you want a GIMP XCF file which retains the layers, which you can edit in the future.


Here is the XCF file for this example, if you want to examine it. The font is Roboto Light which you can get free from google fonts.

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