Nature Notes

The following photoshop procedure will allow you to create a realistic motion blur on any portion of the image.

The Before Image

1.Use your favorite selection tools and select that portion of the image which will not have motion blur. In our example, we carefully select the hawk.
2. Deselect {SELECT > DESELECT or CNTR-D}
3. Duplicate layer { LAYER > DUPLICATE LAYER > OK}
4. Clone away a portion of the subject all around its edges. You don’t need to be too neat as the rest of the process will obscure it. This is necessary to ensure that portions of the subject don’t bleed into the background when the motion blur is applied.

Image with Cloned edges

5. Apply a motion blur {FILTER > BLUR > MOTION BLUR} I used a setting of 0′ angle and 34 pixels in length for this 600 pixel width example.

Image with Motion Blur applied

6. Reselect {SELECT > RESELECT}

7. Clear the selection and allow the subject from the background to show through {EDIT > CLEAR}

8. Deselct and flatten the image {SELECT > DESELECT} { LAYER > FLATTEN IMAGE}

9. Touch up the transition area between the subject and the blurred background with a pass of the blur tool to reduce the sharpness of the transition. I use about a 5 pixel diameter tool.

Final Image

Index to Photoshop Tutorials.

This tutorial is a part of the Photoshop Workflow Series

All Images are Available for Licensing at Singular Video&Pix

It seems simple enough. Drag the copy tool across your image, adjust the sides to your wishes and hit enter. You’ve cropped your image. But there is more. Here are a few uses you may not know about.

Keeping the same proportions

1. Keeping the same proportions

For many end uses, I find it useful to keep the same proportions as the original, usually 2×3 or 3×2. This is a simple task with the crop tool. Just hold down the Shift key as you drag the tool across the image and you’ll find that the crop has been restrained to the original proportions.

Do a perspective crop

2. Do a perspective crop

You can change the perspective while you are cropping. After dragging your crop tool to create a marquee, you can click on the Perspective checkbox on the tool’s menu at the top. This allows you to shift any of the corners of the marquee, increasing or decreasing the perspective from that side.

Crop and Rotate

3. Crop and rotate

After dragging your crop tool to make a marquee in your image, you can rotate your crop before finalizing it. Just hold your mouse outside any corner and click and hold when the double arrow shaped courser appears. You can then drag your marquee in the direction you wish to rotate. Double click inside the marquee or hit enter to finish.

Hide your crop, don't delete

4. Hide your crop, don’t delete

I can find little real world use for the next secret of the cropping tool, but its kind of cute. It needs to be done on an image layer rather than the background, so double-click on the background layer in your layers menu to convert it. After setting your marquee, click the Hide checkbox and complete your crop by hitting the Enter key. If you change to the move tool (The up arrow at the top), you will find you can move the image around and the portion that was outside your crop will appear, as it was not deleted. I suppose this might be useful if you wanted to look at various crops of a certain size.

Crop to match dimensions of another image

5. Crop to match dimensions of another image

Select the crop tool and make the image whose dimensions you want to match the active one. At the tool menu bar at the top, click on “Front Image”. Applying the crop tool to a second image will automatically provide a crop if the same dimensions as the first image.

Index to Photoshop Tutorials.

This tutorial is a part of the Photoshop Workflow Series

All Images are Available for Licensing at Singular Video&Pix

Orchard (Before)

One of the secrets photo editors have used for magazine images is saturating colors through Color Burn. It is especially effective for Landscapes. Of course not all landscapes benefit from this type of processing but a great many do.

It is a simple process:

Add a duplicate layer (Layer>Duplicate Layer)

Change the Blending Mode to Color Burn. This is easy to do with the Layers Menu open (Window>Layers), then clicking on the small window on the top left and choosing Color Burn. Make sure the top or duplicate layer is highlighted.

This will probably be too strong, so you will want to reduce the opacity by changing the top right window in the Layers menu. Often about 20-30% is a good choice.

Thats it!

Orchard (After)

Index to Photoshop Tutorials.

This tutorial is a part of the Photoshop Workflow Series

All Images are Available for Licensing at Singular Video&Pix