The Motion Blur Photo Effect

Have you ever seen the poster of the Matt Damon action film The Bourne Ultimatum? That distinguishable blue colored poster with Jason Bourne walking along a busy street with a gun in his hand is a really simple yet very much recognizable snapshot. After the success of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, people were quick to recognize the blue colored poster of the third installment of one of the most action-packed movie series of all time. It’s also one cool example on how motion blur effect can alter a photo and how it can add more drama.

Recreating that poster design and applying it in one of your photos would be super cool. Once the effect is achieved, you can upload the photo in Facebook, or make it your phone or computer wallpaper. You can also blow it up and print it as a banner for an upcoming gathering at your house.

So how do you achieve that same cool effect as that with The Bourne Ultimatum’s poster? Here’s how:

1. Open the photo you want to edit in Photoshop. For this tutorial, we’re using a photo of a man walking towards the camera to recreate that “Bourne Ultimatum” effect.

Photo Credit: Man Walking by catalin82

2. Duplicate the Background Layer. This will create a new layer in the Layers palette named “Layer 1”.

3. At the bottom of the Tools palette, click on the foreground color. The Color Picker box would appear. To create that bluish hue as in the poster, set the RGB tones with the following values: R = 48, G = 94, and B = 116. Click OK.

4. At the bottom of the Layers palette, click on the New Adjustment Layer icon and then go to Hue/Saturation. As soon as the Hue/Saturation dialog box is open, tick the “Colorize” box and then click OK. This would result to your photo having that bluish tone you’ve preset.

5. Now notice that everything, including human skin, has been colored blue. To retain that fleshy color of the skin just like in the movie poster, click on the Brush Tool.

6. Set the foreground color to black and the background color to white.

7. Decrease the opacity of your brush to about 30%. Make sure that the brush is set to the soft-edged one and Mode is set to Normal.

8. In the Layers palette, select the layer mask of the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer.

9. Using the brush, paint over the skin in order to remove the blue tones and restore the fleshy color.

10. Now that we’re done recreating the color, it’s time to apply that motion blur effect. Select Layer 1 in your Layers palette.

11. Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. In the dialog box, enter the following values: Angle = 40^o, Distance = 35 pixels. Click OK.

12. Now you don’t want the persons in the photo looking blurred too, so to remove that, select Layer 1 and then click on the Layer Mask icon in your Layers palette.

13. Remember Step 9 wherein you used the brush tool to restore the fleshy color of the skin? Use the same step in order to remove the blurry effect on the man in the photo. You may have to use a larger brush size for this. To increase the brush size, simply press the right bracket key on your keyboard several times until you get your preferred brush size.

14. Start brushing on the man to remove the blurred effect on him.

15. Now your photo would be looking quite “Bourne-ish”. To top it off, add some noise for more effect.

16. To add noise, add a new layer and place it on top of all the layers in the palette.

17. Make sure that your background color is white.

18. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. This would bring up a dialog box. Set the amount to 100% or more. The higher the resolution of your photo, the higher the amount of blur you should apply.

19. Change the Blend Mode of this noised layer to Color Burn. Lower the Opacity of this layer to about 10%.

Once done, save and remember to rename the photo to preserve the unedited version of the photo. Now you have a photo with effects similar with that of The Bourne Ultimatum’s.