Bernskiold Media

You’d be surprised at how many times they shoot cars for car ads standing still, parked and then make them look like they are moving later in Photoshop. Learn how to archive this effect so you can do the same!

Opening the Image

First off, open up an image that you want to apply the effect on. Images that are shot from the side, in a relatively simple environment, works best for this specific effect.

Convert for Smart Filters

Convert the layer for Smart Filters by going to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

Adding Motion Blur

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Depending on the angle of the driving car, the angle setting will change. In this example, it is driving relatively horizontal, making 0° a good setting. Distance varies too depending on the resolution of the image. Here, I have set it to 30px. It should blur the background enough without leaving big trails in front and back of the car.

Masking Out the Car

Now it is time to mask out the car so that it is still in focus.

Click on the white smart filter icon to make sure you have the smart filter layer mask activated. Then, make sure your foreground and background colors are reset (press D) and then set black as your foreground color (press X which switches background to foreground). Take the brush tool and with a big enough brush at medium softness, paint over the car.

If you go too far out and you start to hide the effect on the surroundings, just switch back to white as foreground (press X) and paint over the area again to make sure the effect shows there.

Finishing off the Effect

There is still one more thing that is missing. The wheels look like they are still. To solve this, first duplicate the photo layer by pressing Command + J (PC: Control + J). Then right-click on the layer copy and select Rasterize Layer.

Make sure the layer copy is selected. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the toolbar (under the Rectangular Marquee Tool). Click right in the center of the wheel, hold down Shift (which is going to make sure it stays a perfect circle) and Option/Alt (which is going to scale it from the center) and drag out to make a selection around the wheel.

Go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur. The amount here will again vary depending on your resolution. In this case, an amount of about 20-25 works great. Make sure the mode is set to Spin and Best quality.

Repeat for the other wheel.

Masking The Wheels

To take most advantage of the smart filter (being able to change the motion blur whenever), we want to mask out the wheels from the top layer, so only them are shown from the top layer.

Add a layer mask to the copied layer, fill it with black, then grab your brush tool and paint out (using white as foreground color) the wheels themselves.

The Final Effect

A special thank you to Elenor Bengtsson for letting me use one of her photos for this tutorial.