Live filters
James Paterson demonstrates how to add panning blur effects to moving subjects and get to grips with live filters in Affinity Photo
Craft motion blur effects with Affinity
A touch of motion blur can create a sense of action with vehicles and other moving objects in your photos. Shooting for panning blur involves using a fairly slow shutter speed (usually around 1/100 to 1/20 sec, depending on the speed of the subject), then panning the camera in sync with the object. If the timing and panning is right, the object will come out sharp and the background will be blurred by the movement of the camera.
However, it can be tricky to get it perfect in-camera. So if you want to add the motion blur effect to images afterwards, Affinity Photo offers a host of useful tools.
In this project we’ll show you how it’s done. For a realistic panning blur effect we need our car to be sharp and everything else blurred, so we begin by cutting out the car with precise selection tools. We can start our selection with the fantastic Selection Brush, then perfect it with the Refine command. Once done, we can blur everything behind the car.
The Motion Blur live filter is ideal, as it lets us blur along a linear angle. We can then use another live filter – the Radial Blur filter – to make the wheels appear to spin. Along the way we’ll encounter many key editing tools, useful whether you want to add a panning blur to a car or simply get to grips with live filters and selections in Affinity Photo.
Select the car
Grab the Selection Brush tool and make sure ‘Snap to Edges’ is checked in the tool options at the top. Paint over the car to select it. Use the ] and [ keys to resize the brush tip as you paint and hold Alt to subtract areas if the tool includes unwanted details. Continue until the car is selected.
Create panning blur
Go to Layer>new Live Filter Layer>blur> Motion Blur. Increase the Radius and use the Rotation setting to control the direction and strength of the blur. After blurring, there may be details around the car that stick out – if so highlight the top layer, add a layer mask then paint black to hide parts of the car layer.
Go for a spin
Highlight the cutout car layer, then grab the Elliptical Selection tool and drag a circle over one of the wheels. Hit Cmd/ctrl+j to copy the area to a new layer, then go to Layer> New Live Filter Layer>blur>radial Blur. Increase the Radius to 9, then drag to align the centre of the radial blur with the wheel.
Improve the selection
Click the Refine button at the top. Increase the Border Width to expand the area of refinement along the selection edge, and use the Matt brush to tidy any messy areas. Use the Foreground and Background brushes to signify different areas. Set the Output to ‘New Layer’ and hit Apply.
Finishing touches
Repeat the blur over the other wheels. If you need to hide parts of the blur, highlight the live filter effect layer and paint with black to hide it. Add motion blur to other areas that may need it, such as the reflections in the paintwork.
Fill behind the car
Highlight the ‘Background’ layer and duplicate with Cmd/ctrl+j, then hold Cmd/ctrl and click the thumbnail of the cutout car layer to load a selection. Go to Select>grow/shrink and expand the selection edge by a few pixels. Next, go to Edit>fill. Check ‘Inpainting’ and hit Apply.