I have been taking a Photoshop class, and getting quite the refresher on Blur techniques.  I forgot the vast varieties of blurs that exist in Photoshop.  So I thought I’d have fun with it, and demonstrate several different blur techniques.

So many of my photos are Wildlife and Landscape.  I thought it would be good to use an example of blurring out background distractions… like crowds and people.  I solicited my photog friend, MaureenK.  MaureenK goes to lots of horse and car shows…. and you can always count of crowds to be present at those types of events.  She was willing to let me ‘have my way’ with one of her photos for the sake of my little BLUR exercise.  You can see more of MaureenK’s work on Flicker:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/kovacs_m/

Here’s her original picture:

First up, I tried a RADIAL BLUR from the Photoshop toolbar, Filter-Blur-Radial Blur:

Then I got creative and used the Filter-Blur Gallery-Pallette Knife, there are so many to choose from.

I got tired of this guy standing next to the horse watching me.  So with the power of Photoshop and it’s amazing Content Aware Fill, I selected him with my lasso tool, and deleted him before moving on to my next blur technique.

Then I used the Filter-Blur-Field Blur technique, setting focus pins and blur pins to identify what I wanted in and out of focus.  Cool tool.

I had to try the Filter-Oil Paint technique while I was at it, for an interesting artsy look:

And finally, since I was playing.  I decided this black horse and rider would be happy going to the beach:

Gotta love Photoshop!

Special thanks to MaureenK for letting me play with her picture.