Angled Wheel Blur Technique Tutorial

Perfect Balance

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I really didn't want this in my gallery, so I just decided to make a new thread.

First off, this is the shot I will be working on. I already radial blurred the backround so I won't have to bother with it later.


Now, the first step, obviously, is to select the wheel (I used the polygon select tool) and then copy it to a new layer by using the "Layer via copy" button. When you do this you should have 2 layers. 1 with the original picture on it, and the other with only the wheel.


Then, you retrieve you selection by holding ctrl and clicking the "wheel only" layer. When you get the selection again, use the "free transform" tool to rotate the wheel to a sort of "vertical" position that a line can be drawn down the middle of it. I demonstrated the "line" in this pic by a red line.


After you do this, do another free transform and stretch the wheel sideways until it forms a perfect circle, again demostrated by a red circle.


After the wheel is in a circle shape, radial blur the wheel to your liking using "radial blur." Line the center of the blur up with the center of the wheel. Make sure not to confuse this with the center of the circle. The red dot indicates where the center of the blur should be.


After blurring the wheel, use the free transform wheel to rotate and squish the wheel to fit on top of where the wheel originally was. feel free to enlarge the wheel at this point.


Repeat this step for the other wheel, and you should have something like this.


If you have any questions, or if something is unclear to you, please ask here or send me a pm.

 
may i add something to this tutorial? in the first step of the tutorial, i highly recommend using the marquees tool rather than using the lasso tool. hold shift and hit m to use the circular marquee and select the area around the wheel, then right click and go to "Transform Selection" this will allow u to transform the marquee to go along the outer rim of the wheel. using this tool allows a cleaner cuz around the edges compared to the lasso tool. ;)

with that said, very cool tutorial PB, ive always wondered how u guys do these, thank you for enlightening me. i will definately try this out and credit u for this :)
 
Thanks PB. Very nice tutorial. I you already saw in my last update, I suck at the angled wheel blur. This will help a lot. 👍
 
FaLLeNAn9eL
may i add something to this tutorial? in the first step of the tutorial, i highly recommend using the marquees tool rather than using the lasso tool. hold shift and hit m to use the circular marquee and select the area around the wheel, then right click and go to "Transform Selection" this will allow u to transform the marquee to go along the outer rim of the wheel. using this tool allows a cleaner cuz around the edges compared to the lasso tool. ;)

with that said, very cool tutorial PB, ive always wondered how u guys do these, thank you for enlightening me. i will definately try this out and credit u for this :)
Thanks for the tip, I've never tried that, I just feather it 1 pixel and it seems to do a good job of smoothing things out.
 
I do almost the exact same things when I'm blurring a wheel on an angle, so great minds think alike PB.

FA - I tried your way as well, which feels a bit odd, but I understand where you're coming from. However, if any bodywork gets in the way of the ellipse then it doesn't work. Of course, some negative selecting can fix that... I usually don't worry too much about being exact with the polygon tool because the tires are almost always absolute black, so nobody can tell which part of the image you had turned into a seperate layer for the blurring. If that all makes sense.

Either way, both methods work well, this will definitely be helpful for people who were wondering how to handle angled wheels :)
 
SlipZtrEm
I do almost the exact same things when I'm blurring a wheel on an angle, so great minds think alike PB.

FA - I tried your way as well, which feels a bit odd, but I understand where you're coming from. However, if any bodywork gets in the way of the ellipse then it doesn't work. Of course, some negative selecting can fix that... I usually don't worry too much about being exact with the polygon tool because the tires are almost always absolute black, so nobody can tell which part of the image you had turned into a seperate layer for the blurring. If that all makes sense.

Either way, both methods work well, this will definitely be helpful for people who were wondering how to handle angled wheels :)

Yeah Slip, I completely agree on the selection part of that. I don't usually get too cute with my slection because it really doesnt matter. It's actually better to leave a little bit around the wheel with a selection feather. It helps it look a little more seamless. And if you have any excess, you can just rub it out with the eraser. But this wheel blur tutorial is pretty much how I do it as well.

And if you want to get even more technical and picky, you can select and blur the inside part of the wheel and the rim seperately. It will make the edge where the wheel and the rim meet up very crisp and clean and the blurs won't bleed into each other. If I ever get time (Which I highly doubt I will ever get any time in the next month or so...) I will maybe give an update using that method. I have'nt actually tried it yet, but I have thought about it and I am pretty sure I could do it seamlessly. It would require a lot of layer duplication, but I think the end resuld could be very nice.

Anyway, good job on the tutorial PB.👍 Nice picture as well.👍
 
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