In this video I'm going to show you how to use the Path Blur filter in Photoshop
We're going to work with this image and the first thing that we're going to do is select
the soccer player so that we can work with him independently from the background.
This is not going to be a selection tutorial.
I do have a tutorial where I show you how to select almost anything
using the Select and Mask Workspace.
I'll place a link
down below in the description in case you're not familiar with selecting things in Photoshop.
However, in this tutorial we don't need to be very precise so you can do two things,
you can select the Quick Selection Tool and click-and-drag over the soccer player to select him.
Or if you're in a newer version of Photoshop, Photoshop CC2019 and newer, you can click
on the Select Subject button Adobe Sensei Photoshop's AI will automatically determine
the subject of the image and select it.
It does a really job, as you can see.
You can add to the selection in areas that it missed, like the soccer ball here
and part of his hair.
And you can hold Alt option on the Mac and click-and-drag and subtract areas that are
selected that shouldn't be selected.
I want to make sure that I am selecting the entire soccer player but I don't want to spend
too much time fine tuning the image so I'll use the small hack for that.
I'm going to go and do Select, Modify, Expand, to expand my selection and I'll expand it
three pixels and press OK.
The selection is now three pixels larger and it seems like I'm selecting every part of
the soccer player which is what I want.
You can also click on Select and Mask and maybe smooth the selection a little bit.
I have the
black and white view which shows me my mask,
then I'll press OK.
I just don't want any jaggy edges.
Then with my background selected I can press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac to duplicate the layer.
Now I have that soccer player on his own layer.
Then I can right-click and convert that layer into a smart object so that I can apply my
blur non-destructively.
I'm going to go into Filter, Blur Gallery, Path Blur.
This tool allows me to create motion blurs along a path.
You can control the shape and amount of blurring.
Photoshop automatically composites the effect of multiple Path Blurs applied to an image.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
I have this path here by default,
this is where the blur starts and this is where it ends.
I can click-and-drag and you can see that as I drag on my path the blur changes.
In the center you have this point that you can click-and-drag to curve the path.
And if I click on the end point and hover over it you can see this overlay.
If you click-and-drag on the overlay, you can change the end point speed.
You also have a slider here on the Blur Tools which controls the same thing.
Basically, when this is set to zero the end point has no blur.
Notice how all the blur is here on the start point and there's not much of a blur where
the path ends on his foot.
You can create a path by clicking to create a point, and clicking and again and again,
and Photoshop blurs the image along that path.
You can click on the last point that you created to complete the path
and you can see that effect there.
The controls in the blur tools control all the paths at the same time so if I click on
Speed and drag you can see how I'm controlling all the paths at the same time.
However, if I click on an end point.
This end point slider only controls that end point and not the second end point.
To delete a path you can simply select the point and hit the Delete key or Backspace
on the keyboard to remove that path.
I could also delete the original one and we can start from scratch.
So, what we want to do in this example is bring in dynamic motion to this image.
I want to see the motion of his foot and his arm swinging out as he kicks the ball.
So, before you would start creating a path think about how the blur would actually look like.
His legs and his arms are doing most of the motion so I'll start the blur on his hand
and end it on his body.
I'll click on this point to close that path, click-and-drag on this point to curve the blur.
I also want to select the end point and bring the speed down to zero because most of the
speed should be up where his hand is since he's swinging out.
I can also do the same things with his leg,
click, click again, and click on the last
point to close the path.
I will also curve it and also select the end point and bring the end point speed down to zero.
In just those two paths I've already created the motion of his arm swinging
and also his foot swinging, this kicking foot.
I could also create another path and see if that gives me any better results.
Obviously, like anything else in Photoshop, you do have to do a lot of fine tuning.
In this case, I don't think I need so many paths.
Even if I bring the end point down to zero,
I'm not sure if I need that much blur on this foot.
So what I'll do instead is just stick with the two paths so, I'll click on this point
and hit the Delete key to remove it.
I think the speed is a bit high so I'll reduce it right about here.
And I think that I created good motion to make it seem as if the soccer player is swinging
his arms and swinging his legs.
By the way, I want to point out the second option of a blur, we have Rear Sync Flash
which simply means that the blur simulates the effect of a flash fire at the end of an exposure.
So those are the two different options.
For this example, we're going to stick to basic blur.
Then I'm going to press OK.
Remember that this is a smart object which means that we're working non-destructively.
You can always double-click on the Blur Gallery label
to edit the blur. But I think we have a good blur.
What I'll do now is collapse the smart filters and just work with the layer.
I'm going to hold Alt, Option in the Mac, and click on the Layer Mask icon to create
an inverted Layer Mask, a black Layer Mask to hide everything in that layer.
Then, with the Brush Tool I can paint with white.
White is currently my foreground color so when I paint I can bring back that blur so
I'm selectively bringing the blur back.
So I mainly want the blur on his legs and his arm.
The advantage of working on a separate layer is that you can reduce the opacity, if need
be, and we also have a Layer Mask so I can paint on the rest of the image and then take
advantage of the fade command.
If I go into Edit and Fade, I can fade my last brush stroke so if I bring down the Opacity
you can see how I fade that brush stroke.
Also notice what's happening here in the layer thumbnail.
Notice how that white stroke starts turning gray
which is what's controlling the visibility.
So black is invisible, 100% white is visible, and then the different shades of gray are
different levels of visibility.
So, you can just control that so that you have a nice blur and then press OK.
Obviously, this is a very stylized effect so it's something that you could use on a
poster or any other type of design.