Smoking - Smoke Effect 1

Considering how what I produce will look, and how I want to have some sort of smokey/ashy feel to it, I got an idea to have some smoke in the backgrounds. I reckon with it being white, and then having the smoke light grey could look really effective. It will also cover the 'I want to include images' comment at the start of this project (sort of!).

I found a tutorial on the internet showing how to make smoke effects, this particular one is something you start in illustrator and then take over to photoshop. I tried it out how it said to with the light on the dark background to see if I could do it.

It looks alright for a first go. In parts it does look smokey, but then bits in the middle it doesn't and just completely obvious it's photoshopped. I had another go, this time using white background and grey smoke.

This one has turned out better than the first one. I certainly do think that the light smoke on a white background works effectively. Even so, I am still not 100% feeling this as it doesn't really look natural.

The beginning of the tutorial however on illustrator is interesting, so I had a go at making smoke effects from just using this.

I think that these just look too computer generated for what I am looking to use as I am wanting a lot more of a natural feel to them. Also, doing these on my mac is a nightmare as due to the gaussian blur that is used, moving one anchor point literally takes 5 minutes at least to actually change - damn mac! It's taking way too much time to do these, so I'll leave it for now and have another go on the uni macs see if this is any better.