Painterly Glow Effect In Photoshop CS3

Painterly Glow Effect In Photoshop

Learn Photoshop with Photo Effects Tutorials at Photoshop Essentials.com

Step 5: Duplicate "Layer 1"

Just as we did with the Background layer, let's create a copy of "Layer 1". Again, you can go up to the Layer menu, choose New, and then choose Layer via Copy, but you'll find that the keyboard shortcut for duplicating a layer, Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac), is much faster and is one of the shortcuts in Photoshop you'll definitely want to memorize. We can see in the Layers palette that we now have a copy of "Layer 1" sitting above the original:

A copy of 'Layer 1' is added in the Layers palette in Photoshop CS3. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
Quickly duplicate a layer in Photoshop by pressing Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac).

Step 6: Edit The Motion Blur Smart Filter Settings

There's two things to note with the copy of "Layer 1" that we just created. First, if you look at the blend mode option in the top left corner of the Layers palette, you'll see that it's already set to Hard Light for us, since that's what "Layer 1" was set to. More importantly though, if we look below the layer, we can see that our Motion Blur Smart Filter has also been copied! Currently, the filter is using the exact same settings we applied to "Layer 1", but as we learned a moment ago, to edit the settings for a Smart Filter, simply double-click on the filter's name:

Editing the Motion Blur Smart Filter settings in Photoshop CS3. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
Double-click on the second Motion Blur in the Layers palette to edit its settings.

The Motion Blur dialog box pops open and this time, I'm going to set the Angle to -45° which gives me diagonal blur streaks running from the top left to the bottom right. I'm going to reduce the length of the streaks this time by dragging the Distance slider a little to the left, but feel free to experiment on your own by keeping an eye on the image in the document window as you drag the slider:

The Motion Blur dialog box in Photoshop CS3. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
Smart Filters allow us to edit filter settings at any time without making permanent changes to the image.

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box and apply the second Motion Blur settings. Here's my image now with two Motion Blurs applied, each set to a different angle:

The photo now with two Motion Blur filters applied. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
Both layers now have their own separate copy of the Motion Blur filter, each using different settings.

Again, if at any time you want to try different settings for either Motion Blur filter, simply double-click on its name in the Layers palette to bring its dialog box back up and make your changes.

Step 7: Create Another Copy Of The Layer

Let's add one more Motion Blur to the effect. First, press Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to create a copy of, well, the copy we created back in Step 5. You should now have four layers in the Layers palette, with the newest layer ("Layer 1 copy 2") sitting at the top. Normally, I would recommend renaming the layers to something more descriptive, but in this case, since we're only working with a few layers, it's not really necessary.

Just as we saw back in Step 6, both the blend mode and the Motion Blur Smart Filter have been copied with the layer:

Adding another copy of the layer in Photoshop CS3. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
The Layers palette now contains the original Background layer plus three copies sitting above it.

Step 8: Edit The Motion Blur Smart Filter Settings

Double-click on the latest Motion Blur filter in the Layers palette to bring up its dialog box:

Double-clicking on the Motion Blur Smart Filter in Photoshop CS3. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
Each of the three copies of the Background layer now has its own Motion Blur Smart Filter.

For this third Motion Blur, I'll set my Angle to 45° which gives me diagonal streaks once again but this time running from the bottom left to the top right. I'll also reduce the length of the blur streaks a bit further by dragging the Distance slider towards the right, but again, feel free to choose the settings that work best for your image:

Editing the third Motion Blur Smart Filter settings in Photoshop CS3. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
Edit the third Motion Blur settings.

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. Here's my image after applying the third Motion Blur:

The photo with three Motion Blur Smart Filters applied in Photoshop CS3. Image © 2009 Photoshop Essentials.com.
Three Motion Blur filters have now been applied to the image and can be edited at any time.

Next, we'll finish things off by grouping layers together and masking away some of the blur effect!

Need printable versions of our Photoshop tutorials? Download them as print-ready PDFs!

Go to page: 1 | 2 | 3