This is the image I started from. A work friend took it, and yes I do have full permission to do anything I wish with it. I believe her exact words were "Use your awesome on this picture"

I used the pen tool to select him out of the photo.

Here is the big secret to making an awesome fire person, the first major thing I did was invert the image.

In the layer styles I gave it a yellow-ish orange inner glow, and a slightly darker orange outer glow. I also turned on satin, but made the color yellow and the blending more to hard light.

Next I duplicated that layer and used the plastic wrap filter then turned that layer's blending mode to soft light and lowered the opacity way down.

For this step I turned off all the other layers so you can see what I was adding. I used select color range to select the whites, then I made that selection my work path, then I stroked the path with a very small white brush, with pen pressure turned on. I did this a few more times each time selecting a different color value, and also a slight different brush. Then I duplicated that layer and gaussian blurred it and lowered its opacity. Also I added the eye glow wit ha small white brush and gave a dark orange outer glow in the layer styles.

Next I started adding some fire and also some smoke with the brushes I found. The smoke layer had an orange outer glow to give it a bit of color.

Continued adding fire. Most of the fire layers are set to screen or lighten, to it gets rid of the blacks of that layer. That way I can layer up the flames.

More fire!

More more fire...

This is where the source image of stars came in. I used the select color range to select the whites of the stars, then another layer I filled the selection with white and the deleted the star picture layer. Then I gave that an orange outer glow and lowered the opacity way down. So those are that ashes that are more see though. The more bright ashes I painted in on a layer with an orange outer glow set to hard light. Also (I think a few steps back actually) I duplicated the layer of the guy then I used the glowing edges filter, the desaturated it. Then I used smart sharpen, and unsharp mask, then lowered the opacity a bit and set the layer to overlay. thats what gives his skin that hot coal glowy textured look.

For the last step I added some smoke. Still using the real smoke brushes. Then just last minute tweaks, sharpening, blurring and contrast and all that fun stuff.

Oh almost forgot about the step where I added the cracks to his skin. On one layer with black I put in some cracks with a slight red outer glow, also some white cracks with an outer glow on another layer. then I merged the entire image and then duplicated that layer, then gaussian blurred it. Then erased the parts where I wanted the detail extra sharp. Then lowered the opacity of that layer. Then I also rendered some black and red clouds set the layer to soft light, transformed it a little larger and the erased some of the parts farther away from him thats to get the red-ish aura around him, and to ad to the smokiness. then some sharpening and it was finished!

This is not a step, but the image looked so cool like this, that I thought I would throw it up here for everyone to see....well at least all the cool people who actually look at the step by steps. :) I really liked the effect but it didn't feel like fire anymore.