Choose your forground/background colors. Filter-Render-Clouds Filter-Distort-Twirl to whatever angle looks good. Make an eliptical selection from the center of the twirl and feather to taste. Invert selection, delete, and deselect. Filter-Distort-Shear to whatever is appropriate for your needs. Add layer mask and apply black/white gradient from one edge of the vortex to the other. That's basically how the vortex part of this image was done. I can't take credit for it though. This is from the book Photoshop 6 Effects Magic and this particular section was written by Rhoda Grossman. Anyway, I hope it gives you some ideas. Rich