How To Add Motion Blur Effects To Images In Photoshop For Dynamic Visuals – Blurs are the most used tools in Photoshop, but the least talked about. We’re here to change that! Learn how to use blurs and the Blur Gallery to add amazing effects to your images. Add soft sunset coloring to a photo, add dynamic blur to an action shot, create a tilt-shift miniature effect, create depth of field, and more!
There are countless ways to color a photo, but we want to show you a method that is as effective as it is unique. We added color and brightness to the sunset image by taking a separate photo of the sunset. How? Transforming a sunset photo into a soft light using blurs and some special tools.
How To Add Motion Blur Effects To Images In Photoshop For Dynamic Visuals
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How To Add Motion Blur To A Photo Using Photoshop
Before we can turn the sunset image into a colorful effect, we need a way to blur it – we don’t want any shapes to be visible, just colors and gradients. Click the Filter menu, then Distort, then Polar Coordinates.
If you have never used this tool or heard about it, don’t worry! We find it useful only in very specific situations like this. Notice that this breaks the sunset image into an ellipse, creating a nice radial effect. But it still doesn’t look like soft lighting and color, so let’s continue!
Drag the sunset image onto the same canvas as the image. Before we continue, there is an important step that we must do every time we use Blurs or Blur Gallery. Right click on the sunset layer and select Convert to Smart Object. As a smart thing, we can use the filters as much as we want, but we can go back and change the effect or remove the effect completely without damaging the image itself. Always try to work without harm! This will save you time and help you avoid headaches down the road.
Now that the sunset layer is a smart item, set the Blending Mode to Screen. This hides the darker areas while revealing the lighter areas (the desired lighting). Move and reshape the sunset layer around the image until you find the desired position.
Motion Blur Filter: Add Motion Blur To Your Photo I Skylum
It’s all about the blurs and we haven’t used it yet. But the wait is over. We have highlights in our sunset shot, but it doesn’t look very good. We need to soften it a bit if we want it to look realistic. Select the sunset layer, go to the Filter menu, then the Blur menu, and choose Gaussian Blur.
Gaussian Blur is the blur tool we use because it’s the fastest way to soften a layer evenly with a lot of control. Use the slider to soften the sunset layer until you get a nice and even effect. When you’re done, press OK.
It looks better, but we want the effect to cover a larger area and provide a little contrast. Fortunately, it’s easy! Just copy the sunset layer, then move it, transform it, and adjust the Gaussian blur to make it more varied. Do this as many times as you want. The goal is to have a beautiful and even light in the whole picture.
We are very close, but the impact is very strong. Visibility can be controlled in two ways: Opacity and Layer Masks.
22 Blur Velocity Photoshop Actions
Group all the sunset layers together and lower the opacity at the top of the Layers panel. Then add a layer mask to the group and use the Brush tool to paint black on any areas you want to reduce the effect. Be sure to use a large, soft, low-flow brush for best blending results.
Adding motion blur is another common use of Photoshop’s many blur tools. But in our example, we added motion blur
Using the Motion Blur tool! Instead, we’ll use a combination of the Spin Blur and Path Blur tools to add movement to the context of an image of a racing car.
The wheels are spinning, so Spin Blur is an appropriate sound here. Go to the Filter menu, Filter Gallery and select Spin Blur (Remember to convert the image to a smart object first!) Adjust the blurs to cover the car wheels and adjust the setting to your liking. This is a quick and easy way to achieve a realistic spinning wheel effect! Using Path Blur Path Blur is a relatively new addition to Photoshop’s blur options, Path Blur allows you to apply blur to any number of custom paths. You can see it in the Blur Gallery, just like we did in the Spin Blur. This tool requires a little patience (and computer power!), so take your time. We created some paths using visual cues from the image to simulate natural movement. You may notice that the effect is visible throughout the photo, but this can be taken care of by dialing in the Road Blur settings. Using the magic of layer masks, we select where each effect should appear. We want most of the car to be sharp because it is the center of the photo. We want the wheels to be blurred, but mostly from the Spin Blur effect we used. Path Blur works best when it appears in the background and on some sides of the car. Since you have full control of the brush tool to hide and show where the effect appears, and since it works harmlessly, take your time and adjust everything until you think it looks good. Create a Tilt-Shift Miniature Effect with Tilt-Shift Blur A tilt-shift lens allows the photographer to control the plane of focus while shooting, often creating the illusion that objects in the image are small. The same effect can be created in Photoshop using Tilt-Shift Blur, and it’s surprisingly easy to pull off. Just make sure you’re using a top-down photo and it’s from an angle. If you are taking small objects on the table, you will usually use this perspective, so you will need it if you want to recreate the effect in Photoshop. Don’t forget to convert the layer to a smart object before applying any blurs or filters! Next, go to the Filter menu, then the Blur gallery and choose Tilt-Shift Blur. With the right image, this effect is very easy to achieve with a few small changes to the Tilt-Shift Blur settings. Adjust until the image is sharp along the center line and gradually blurrier towards the top and bottom edges. Create a realistic depth of field effect by blurring the field We all love a creamy, shallow depth of field. While best done in camera with the right lens, you can get something close to Photoshop if the conditions are right. In this example, we will create a shallow depth of field using a simple photo. As with the other examples, choosing the right image for this effect is key, otherwise it will look unrealistic. Here we select an image with some foreground, middle and background elements. This gives us different places where we can add blur while keeping the subject nice and sharp. But what washing equipment should we use? Laundry in the field! Go to the Filter menu, then the Blur gallery and select Field Blur. Field Blur gives you the option to add nodes to your image, and each node creates a different blur effect that you can adjust. We added a node in the lower right corner for some foreground blur, in the upper left corner for background blur, and one in the middle to keep the subject crisp and sharp. The end result is a convincing depth of field that can be used in minutes! Add creative lighting effects with Gaussian blur and motion blur. A soft lighting aesthetic is popular, and with the blur tools, you can transform almost any light source or photo into a unique color quality. In this last example, we turned a simple image of bokeh lights into a beautiful coloring effect for a photo. Bokeh-licious Drag an image of bokeh lights into the same document as the image. You may remember from our first example that if we want to hide the darkness of a layer while preserving the light peaks, Screen Blending Mode is the way to go. Set the blend mode to the bokeh layer of the Screen. Big! Now we just need to soften the lighting effect with – you guessed it – blur. Softening the blurs Maybe