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Learn how to make a motion blur effect using Photoshop. This will give more focus to the main objects in your picture and will give more life to the image too.


Motion Blur Effect
- Open your image in Photoshop.
- Press (Ctrl+J) to duplicate the Background image and rename the new layer to "Motion Blur".
- Now, we need to select the non main objects in our
image so press (D) to set the foreground and background
colors to the default, Select the Brush Tool (B), click
"Edit in quick mask mode" (Q) then set the foreground
color to black and paint all the non main object areas.
You will notice that the painted areas are painted in
red, you can click the "]" and "[" keys to modify the
brush size as needed, I like to have a big brush for
the outer areas and smaller brush size when I come
close to the objects. Notice that you can click
"Reverse Foreground and Background colors" (X) any time
if you do any thing wrong to erase the wrong masking
and (X) again to continue.
- Press (Q) again to exit the "Edit mask mode", Press (Ctrl+C) and (Ctrl+V) to make a new layer of the selection then rename the new layer to "Main".
- Select the "Main" layer, select the "Magic Wand Tool" (W), right click the eye next to the "Main" layer in the Layers window and click "Show/hide all other layers" to show only the "Main" layer.
- Now, select all the empty area of the "Main" layer, make the "Motion Blur" Layer visible again and select it, press (Ctrl+C) ,(Ctrl+V) and rename the new layer to "BG".
- Select the "BG" layer and click Filters > Blur
> Motion Blur, set Angel = 0 and Distance = 33
Pixels.
- You can get another effect by selecting the "BG" layer and clicking Filter > Blur > Radial Blur instead of "Motion Blur".
The Original:

Motion Blur:

Radial Blur:

4 Comments
koonx said,
March 24th, 2010
I'm using photoshop 7 and I'm stuck at step 5 & 6 using the magic wand, can't seems to select empty area
S@m@nth@ said,
January 21st, 2008
Best tutorial ive tried!
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You've done really awesome job! Great tutorial, thanks a lot for sharing this nice post :)