Mastering Motion Blur In Photoshop

On this video Aaron Nace from Phlearn demonstrates how to add motion blur to your image and create a sensation of movement using Adobe Photoshop.

Showing motion blur in your image to emphasize movement isn’t always simple. Although it is always preferable to do it in camera – this can sometime be very challenging and even impractical for many types of shots. Adding motion blur when editing an image is something else.

On the video Nace talks about the 3 steps you need to take in order to achieve a perfect motion blur:

Cut out your subject from the background (Nace used the pen path tool – you can use other tools as well depending on your subject/image).
Remove your subject from the image – this is extremely important as Nace shows in the video (otherwise you will still get some form of blur on your subject – although in some cases this can be more realistic – at least in our view).
create a blur that works for your image (in this case Nace uses two different blurs to create a more interesting motion look).

Finally you will of course need to re-introduce your cut out subject back into the image – and there you have it – a finished image with amazing looking motion blur.

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section (and you can find a lot more Phlearn videos on our special Phlearn subsection).

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.