Tip! Mimic a slow shutter speed with Motion Blur

You don’t have to be a great photographer to achieve impressive results. This quick tip reveals how the Motion Blur filter can replicate a classic camera effect.

Getting to grips with the various Blur filters will really help you to move your artwork forward. If you lock a camera on a tripod and set it to a slow shutter speed, only moving objects will look blurred. This is a great way to create impressionistic motion blur effects, but it can be tricky to shoot. If you have too slow a shutter speed you can over-expose the shot, for example. Take a well-exposed sharp shot and pop it into Photoshop and you can get the same effect with a lot less hassle. We take you through the best way to use this tool, so open up any image of your own (a busy street scene does work rather well for this) and try out these three steps.

Open your source file. Press F7 to activate the Layers palette. Now drag the background layer thumbnail onto the Create New Layer icon to create a copy. Target the duplicated layer. Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Set Angle to 0, Distance to 46 pixels and click OK.

Click the Add a Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Target the layer mask by clicking its thumbnail and go to Image>Adjustments>Invert to make the mask look black. The blurred layer will be transparent.

Grab the Brush tool (B) and pick a soft brush in the Brush picker. Set the foreground colour to white. Click the mask thumbnail to activate it and paint over the figures in your scene. As you paint you’ll reveal the motion blur effect from the masked layer.

Motion blur effects in Photoshop Elements

If you have version 8 or earlier of Photoshop Elements, you will be bereft of layer masks, however, you can achieve a similar result by blurring a duplicate layer and then using the Erase tool to remove most of the blurred pixels. All that should remain are the blurred people, so in theory you should be able to create exactly the same special effect without using layer masks.