Easily Apply a Motion Blur Effect On Any Image

Photoshop Effects

There are times when you need to make a person (or an object) looks like if it was moving fast, but it is very hard to get a clean image if you take a real photo from the action you want to show. Fortunately, there are various ways to make this effect in Photoshop by using the Motion Blur effect. But even this simple task could be a time consuming one if you do not know which tools to use and with a certain order. So today, we will take a static image and properly apply a motion blur effect to make it look like if the subject is really passing by fast.

Step 1

Open your image in Photoshop.

Step 2

Press Ctrl+J on your keyboard to duplicate the background layer.

Step 3

With the duplicated layer selected, make a selection of your subject using any method you prefer. Here I will simply select the "Quick Selection Tool" (W) and use "Select Subject" since is not a very complex selection.

Step 4

With the selection active, click on the "Add Layer Mask" icon in the Layers Panel.

Step 5

Select the "Background" layer and (while holding the Ctrl key on your keyboard) click over the layer mask thumbnail of the duplicated layer.

Step 6

Go to Select > Modify > Expand. Set a value of approximately 20/25 pixels and click OK.

Step 7

Go to Edit > Fill. Under "Contents" select the "Content Aware" option and click OK in the Fill window.

Step 8

Press Ctrl+D on your keyboard to deselect the current selection.

Step 9

With the Background layer selected, go to Layer > Smart Objects > Convert to Smart Object.

Step 10

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set any Distance value you like, set the Angle to match your background and click OK in the Motion Blur window.

A Final Tip:

Now that you know how to properly make a Motion Blur effect in Photoshop, you can change the Blur amount and angle (even after we finish the effect) simply by double clicking on the "Motion Blur" effect of the Smart Object layer.