Today I'm going to show you how to do a sweet little motion blur effect in your pictures. Now you may be a talented enough photographer to achieve this look all on your own without the aid of Photoshop. If so, that's wonderful! But for those of us who aren't always thinking about shutter speeds and apertures until after the moment we hit that shutter release there is always Photoshop. And even if it's not quite as realistic as… well, as the real thing, it's still a fun little technique!
So, I know that Fraulein Maria of Sound of Music fame says that we should start at the very beginning because it's a very good place to start but what can I say? I'm a rebel. So I'm starting at the end. I'm going to show you the end product first just in order to tantalize you.
First thing I did was crop my original image down to the image you see below. I cut out a bunch of superfluous trees and such that just confused the image and made my subject sort of disappear.
So, after cropping it, the next thing I did was begin by grabbing the quick selection tool from my left-hand toolbar. (It’s the one that’s a darker grey than the others, just beneath the arrow.)
There are all sorts of selection tools in Photoshop CS4 and while it is not always the most precise tool, I find that the quick selection tool is my usually my selection tool of choice. You know why? Because it’s quick. Nice how the name of it sort of squares that away for us isn’t it?
And with enough finessing I find that it works quite well for most of my selection purposes. If I was doing professional photo editing I maybe would not use it as often because I’d want more precision but it’s quite the intuitive little tool so don’t underestimate its fabulous powers.
Then I began selecting what I DIDN’T want to be blurred.
I know it might seem more logical to select what you want to be blurred but I like to think backwards and upside down (plus, I think it helps my accuracy if I’m focusing on the small thing rather than the big picture) so I am selecting the thing that I want to remain unblurred, in this case my amazing son who learned how to ride his bike in about 2 minutes time, just about 4 minutes before this picture was taken. To select an area simply click where you want to make the selection.
Above you can see the little broken line around my son that indicates that he’s been selected.
Then you will go back and deselect the areas that you want to remain blurry in the final product. To do so press and hold alt/option and click the area that you want to deselect. In this instance I had initially selected all of my son and his bike so I carefully deselected the areas that were neither of those things (where you could see grass through his arms, etc). I kept the whole front wheel selected. We’ll do something different with it later.
Now what we are going to do is go and change the selection we've just made to the inverse which basically means that we will tell Photoshop to now select everything that is deselected and deselect everything that is selected. Trust me, it sounds more confusing than it is. I promise!
So up on your menu choose select and then Inverse.
Below can you see the broken line around the perimeter of the picture? What that means is that now the area that is selected includes everything in the picture except for my son and his bike.
Now go up and click filter and select blur and then from there select motion blur.
Photoshop will then bring up this little box. I just used the slider to find just the right amount of movement.
When you are happy with it, hit okay. You can always go to edit/undo blur if you want to redo it more to your satisfaction. (Or hit command/Apple Z.)
Now we are going to deselect what we have selected. Simply right click anywhere on the picture and hit deselect.
Now, with your quick selection tool again we are going to select the inside of the front wheel of the bike, making sure not to select the bar that connects the bike to the wheel, the bar for which I’m sure there’s some sort of official name that bikey people would know.
We want the inside of the wheel to have more of a circular spinning blur rather than a regular motion blur. It looks slightly more authentic… though let’s be completely honest… this picture isn’t really about authenticity is it? It’s about coolness.
So again go up to filter in your menu bar and select Blur. But this time you are going to choose Radial blur.
It will then bring up this lovely little window here.
Again, move the slider until you have the right amount of spin on your wheel and then hit Okay.
And that’s it… now you have your super cool motion blurred picture which you will show to your kid and say, “Look at the cool thing I just did with your picture!” And he will very seriously respond saying, “Yeah, but I REALLY was going that fast.”
Okay then. As long as we all know that, nobody gets hurt.
Nan can be found being her sassy self at her blog, Life is Like a Lunchbox, where she blogs about anything from photography, being an American living in Canada to being a homeschooling Mom to four boys and the wife of one hot pastor. Just like a lunchbox, her blog is always full of daily random surprises in all colors, shapes and sizes.
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That's brilliant! I have to try that out
That is cool! Thanks for the tutorial!
Awesome tutorial! Thanks!