How to Create a motion blur effect

1 Shoot a burst

In Finder, choose File > New Folder. Import a burst mode photo into Photos for Mac. It’ll appear in the Bursts Album. Hold å and drag the burst mode photo’s thumbnail to the new folder to export the series of shots as files.

4 Change stack blend

Go to the the Layers panel and toggle open Live Stack Group to see the aligned shots in the stack. By default, the stacked shots are blended using a Median setting. Click the icon to the left of the group’s checkbox and choose Mean.

7 Add a mask

Click on the duplicated layer, then choose Layer > New Empty Mask Layer to hide the layer’s contents. Choose the Paint Brush tool from the toolbar. In the Options bar, set Opacity to 20%, then set the foreground colour to white.

2 Import the shots

In Affinity Photo, choose File > New Stack and tick the Automatically Align Images box. Click Add, then choose Perspective from the alignment pop-up menu. Select the series of shots in the folder you created, click Open, then OK.

5 Examine the shots

The Mean mode creates a motion blurred look that’s similar to that created by the iPhone’s Long Exposure effect, but we can improve on this. Hold å and click on the thumbnail of the layer for the last frame in the burst sequence to view it.

8 Reveal the subject

Click on the mask layer to target it. Apply the brush over the subject. The semi-transparent tip reveals pixels from the top layer. Brush over areas a few times to make them more solid, to mimic a burst of flash during a long exposure.

3 Rotate the canvas

If your burst of source photos was captured with your iPhone in portrait orientation (like ours was), Affinity Photo may import the images in landscape. To get them the right way up, use a 90° rotation option in the Arrange menu.

6 Duplicate a layer

Next, ≈- click on the same layer’s thumbnail and choose Duplicate from the pop-up menu to create a copy. Drag the duplicated layer above the Live Stack Group. The solid duplicated layer will hide the motion blurred stack below.

9 Experiment

Live Stack Group has many blending modes. Here we’ve taken a burst of five shots and used the Mid-Range setting to reveal each layer as a sequence of sharp shots rather than a blur. A layer mask helps make one layer more prominent.