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My hubby is an avid bicyclist and is thrilled to
finally get some good biking weather.
As he was leaving for a long bike ride today,
he asked if I could snap a photo of him to use as
his profile pic on a biking web site.
"Honey, I'll just ride up the driveway and you
can take a picture," he said.
I groaned, knowing our driveway would mean an
ugly background.
Me to Hubby, "Can you pedal SLOW so I can keep focus?"
This is the actual photo I snapped. I think he was just about to
topple over from lack of movement.
Hardly the "Man in Motion" shot I knew he wanted...
so I added motion blur to the background in Photoshop.
It's actually very easy to do if you know the
basics of Photoshop.
Start by clicking on the Quick Selection Tool
as seen by the yellow arrow.
If you don't know how to use this tool, there
are plenty of Youtube videos to teach you.
Using the tool, outline your subject like I did here:
Next click: Select>Inverse
Now your background is selected and we are going to
give it some motion blur.
Click on: Filter>Blur>Motion Blur
A dialog box will come up.
Turn the angle wheel to go in the direction of the
subject's movement.
Use the distance slider to create the amount of blur you like.
You will need to play with this until it's to your liking.
In this photo, I used 240 Pixels.
It's THAT easy!
It sure does add some life and movement
and makes him look like he's zooming.
It also gets rid of that cluttery background.
Nobody will know he was inching along so I wouldn't
lose focus... *wink*!
He's so darn cute in those biker shorts! *another wink*!
Thanks for the great tip! I'll have to try it.
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