How To Create Sophisticated Motion Effects With Photoshop’s Path Blur

Photoshop CC’s recent addition to its Blur Gallery, Path Blur offers a creative and flexible way to add directional motion to your images in post-production. It’s astonishing! You’ve got to try it to believe it – and to truly understand it.

The Blur Gallery now has five effects (Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Path Blur, and Spin Blur) that can be controlled from a single panel. Once you’ve accessed one, you can quickly access the others at the same time enabling you to create complex blur effects in a single stop. Path Blur alone is capable of delivering lots of complex motion effects with one simple path.

Before applying Path Blur, consider using a Smart Object to make the filter non-destructive, re-editable, and maskable. (I recommend you acquire Raw files as a Smart Objects but in cases where you can’t, such as cases that involve merges or stacks or major retouching, convert your Background layer to a Smart Object – Layer: Smart Objects: Convert To Smart Object.)

To apply the filter follow this path - Filter: Blur Gallery : Path Blur. The Blur Gallery panel will appear, offering you five extraordinary sliders and multiple points of control.