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1.
My goal here is to take
this photo of these two guys sparring and make it more exciting by emphasizing the action. I want
there to be some visual movement in the leg that's being kicked. There's at least three ways to do
this, using multiple layers with varying transparency settings; using the History Palette and History
Brush to repaint previous states; and the one I'm going to try here, using the Motion Blur Filter.
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 2.
You'll remember if you
read one of the companions to this tutorial, dealing with the History Palette and Brush, I used a
Quick Mask to take a selection of the part I wanted to blur, the leg. |
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 3.
Once the disembodied leg
is on its own layer, I duplicate it and use the copy for the effects I'm going to create. That way,
I'm not altering the original selection and if I need to start over, or make it visible with my
blurring effect, it's there if I want it.
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 4.
You can see from the shot
of my layers palette that I duplicated the copy two times. The blur I'm going to apply will use all
three of the "copy" layers. First I select the layer titled "Leg Copy" and choose Filter: Blur: Motion Blur.
The Motion Blur Filter blurs pixels in a particular direction (from -360º to +360º) and a specific distance (from 1 to 999). You control both within the Motion Blur Preview/Dialog. For the Angle, you can enter a variable in the corresponding box, or click and rotate the adjacent circle. The blur Distance is controlled by the slider at the bottom of the box. I chose an angle that corresponded with the direction I wanted the leg to look like it was moving in; and a short distance of 31 pixels. |
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 5.
Next, I selected the
layer "Leg Copy2" and applied the Motion Blur again, this time extending the distance to 62 pixels. |
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 6.
Finally, I selected the
layer "Leg Copy3" and applied the Motion Blur a third time, giving this blur a distance of 133 pixels. I did this in three stages to make the blurring effect become less transparent as it got near to the leg. If you just blur one layer 133 pixels, the distance is the same, but the blur looks too transparent. |
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 7.
Here's what the image
looks like after all three blurs are applied. It's kind of interesting but I'm going to continue
because right now the blur is happening above and below the leg. We don't want it to look like our black-belt is just standing there, balancing on one foot and waving his leg back and forth, taunting the other guy. One crotch-shot would soon put an end to that silliness. |
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 8.
To take care of that, I
load the selection of that uppermost (and unaltered) layer, "Leg." Then I choose Select: Inverse, so the opposite region is selected. All I have to do then is select the eraser tool and erase the blur above his leg. (So I didn't have to erase three times, I linked the three "blur" layers and merged them into one.) |
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 9.
This is the result after
erasing. Looks pretty cool. (I was originally planning on making the uppermost (unblurred) leg layer
visible again, but after the job was done, I thought it looked better this way.)
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 10.
Here's a miniature shot
of what the whole image looks like. Yep, I'm glad I'm not that other karate guy. |
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 11.
After the completion of
this, I realized that though it looked good, if anyone was paying attention to the visual clues such
as the flapping pant leg; or had any knowledge of how a kick like this is thrown; they would realize
that any blur seen should be to the above right of the leg. In fact, most of the blur would be hidden
by the leg itself. But that's not very visually interesting, so I made this alternate version of the
image using the same techniques as above. Happy now?
Which one do you like better? |
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 12.
Using the same techniques
as above, I took this image of a basketball and Motion Blurred it, resulting in the image at bottom
left. Now that you know this cool technique you can use it tons of places- even on text.
There's always more than one approach to a job when you're using Photoshop. Be sure to check out the companion tutorials to this one to see other ways to achieve this effect. |
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 example:
Using a combination of
the Motion Blur Filter and multiple layers/transparencies, I created the image below (with some
help from the Lens Flare Filter). Want to fight?!?! Fight Me!!!
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