Selective Blurring in Photoshop

August 5, 2008 · Print This Article

In this Selective Blurring in Photoshop Tutorial I hope to explain how to blur selective parts in an image.

With the below image I wanted to blur the background and keep the girl completely normal. In this tutorial I’ll explain how you can do this, on this image and others you want to in the future. I’ll be using layers, masks, the brush tool and simple blurring. It may sound complicated but it’s really very easy when you know how.

Below you’ll see I used a motion blur - although this tutorial is on blurring, you can adapt it to change the background colour but keep the girl the same. All you have to do is think outside of the box and play.

Feel free to request something similar to this Selective Blurring in Photoshop Tutorial.

Before

After

Selective Blurring in Photoshop Tutorial - The Steps

Firstly open up the image you want to use for this tutorial (you can use the image above to try this out), if you don’t know how check this tutorial out.

Now duplicate your layer. To do this, I use a shortcut: CTRL (win) / Command (mac) + J

Now go -> Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal All - your layers should now look like this! Your newly duplicated layer should have a small thumbnail of your image, and another one to the right, it should be white.

Now on this image I used Motion Blur but in the future you can play with this effect and use any form of blur… So, now go -> Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur - Once the little box has appeared change the angle to 0 and I changed the distance to 45

Once you’ve got your blur, go to your layers palette and look at your duplicated layer and also the white layer mask. With your mouse, select the mask.

Now go to your brush tool, make sure the colour you’re currently using is black. Also make sure that you also have your opacity at 100% and select a round default brush, I decided on the size 35.

Now start to erase the blurriness that you can see on the girl - your aim is to erase all the burry effect from the girl but also leaving the background blurred. To begin with, you may find it hard, but it gets easier. The best thing to do is go slow and possibly zoom in so you can see the lines better. To zoom in, just press Z on your keyboard, then click your image - it’ll zoom in. Go back to your brush tool (press B) and continue to erase.

You can have a look at my layer and image half way through here. If you look at my layers and then at the mask (white
box) you should be able to see the black bits… that’s what I’m doing while erasing the girl.

Aaandddd you’re done. I hope this Selective Blurring in Photoshop Tutorial was helpful - however if you have any questions regarding this tutorial then please leave a comment below and I’ll happily reply.