Motion Photography of Cars

[rsroadkilla]

how do you do it??

I wanna photoshop mine! lol

[ElectricEnergy]

I've never actually tried it on an angled shot... I might have to do that sometime and figure it out.

For a shot like mine, its fairly easy though. (I was sorta playing around a bit so i might have done this the a---backwards way)

1. First step is to select the entire car with a marquee, de-select any areas where you can see the background through it. (Like between the spokes on the rims sometimes).

2. In the menu bar go to Select >> Inverse. This should make it so everything is selected except the car itself.

3. Filter >> Blur >> Motion Blur. You can use any settings you want. This really effects the sensation of speed, so play around with it a bit until you get what you are looking for.

You might notice that some of the color from the car has bled out into the background. Don't worry about that for the moment, If it bugs you enough we can fix it later.

4. Right now it probably looks like your car is moving at super sonic speeds... with the brakes locked up. Select each wheel/rim with a circle marquee. It's very important that the center of the marquee lines up with the center of the rim. I used the rulers make sure of that.

5. Now go to Filter >> Blur >> Radial Blur. I turned the strength all the way up. Seemed to give the best effect for this particular picture. Make sure to set the quality to "Best"

6. The picture is probably looking pretty good now. I used the clone tool to get rid of the light blue bleeding off of the windshield into the background. Since the background is already blurred and distorted, you won't notice the difference.

Alternatively you could do a better job if you split it up over a few layers.

I did this in CS2 so I don't know for sure if all the options for the filters are available in previous versions.

[mr1in6billion]

Alternatively you could do a better job if you split it up over a few layers.

I did this in CS2 so I don't know for sure if all the options for the filters are available in previous versions.

Layers and masking is millions of times better than selections since if you don't like whats showing you can change it at any time, not to mention it allows for gradients (so does selections through feathering, but thats harder to do since you can't see results till it's over). Clone the outside of the car first, that way if you suck at cloning the motion blur will cover it up. The wind function can also give good results (PSP version more than PS), once or twice in both directions ends up like motion blur but more wispy.

Layers and blurring go back pretty much to the beginning of photoshop.

[ElectricEnergy]

Yeah I agree. I did this pretty quickly, Masking would have made more sense if I were being serious about it.

Of course layers and blurring go back to the beginning. :p But Adobe seems to change little things like the names of check boxes in the filter tools every time they launch a new release. That's why I thought it was important that I said I did this in CS2.

[SSR Mx-3]

A majority of the proffesional motion photos are taken with cameras with a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second or greater. Normal digital cameras usually operate at 1/60 of a second (newer cameras have a slightly higher shutter speed). The higher the shutter speed, the better the picture is in motion. I just got a 7.2 Megapixel camera, and you can minutely adjust the shutter speed. I will try to get a good photo of my car in motion and post it up here soon.