Candle or Gas Flame - part 1

The first step is to creat a black background you can use other colours, however I find black to be the most effective. Then add a new layer and go to, tools and gradient tool. You want to select black and white gradient and select reflective gradient. You should get something like this..... The closer the gradient in the middle of the layer the better.

Now the easy bit.. Go to filter..Distort....Polar Coordinates and choose....Polar to rectangular. you should have this........

Looking like a flame....... All you need to do now is select the best one and paste it on top of the layers..remember to take away the previous layers and just leave the Black background . If you have any excess gradient around the flame just use a soft brush with black to clean up.

You can use colour at this stage, what method you prefer is ok. I used Image... Adjustments.......hue and saturation and selected colourise with Hue 200 and Saturation 45.

This stage I used the edit free transform tool to bend and distort the flame any way you want. I have used the warp tool here.... This is the fun part experiment... You can also experiment at the gradient stage. To create a yelow center follow the steps and resize and over lay this may be another tut.? Hope this was useful and have fun.