Use this handy filter to mimic long-exposure scenes and transform them with a bold black and white treatment
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Blurred motion can be a game-changer for landscape photos, even if you add it in Photoshop afterwards. The original image here is a case in point. The straight-out-of-camera colour version is rather drab and the choppy seas are a distraction. By contrast, the blurred black-and-white version is much stronger. The motion blur draws attention to the jagged shapes and contrasts with the textures on the island. But a long exposure isn’t just a clever effect or a visual trick, it’s also a way to convey the passing of time or emphasise a sense of isolation, which is why it works for our shot here.
Of course, it’s always best to capture the motion blur we’re mimicking here at the time of shooting by using a long exposure (to capture motion in clouds you’re likely to need a strong neutral density filter to stretch your shutter speed out to a minute or more). Sometimes, a long exposure isn’t achievable. At times, you might be caught short without an ND filter or a tripod and there are times when it’s impossible – here, for instance, the shot was taken from a moving boat. Thankfully, it’s fairly simple to add motion blur effects in Photoshop, especially if you can get to grips with the excellent Path Blur tool.
1 Make a selection
First, we need to isolate the area. Go to Select > Sky then hit Cmd/ Ctrl+J to copy the sky to a new layer. Highlight the bottom layer and use the Object Selection tool to select the sea, then copy to a new layer with Cmd/Ctrl+J. Rightclick the new layers and ‘Convert to Smart Object’. This keeps any filter effects non-destructive, so after applying our filters we have the option to tweak things later.
2 Isolate the layer
Before we start blurring parts of the image, hold Cmd/Ctrl and click on the layer thumbnail of the part we want to blur. This loads the shape of the layer as a
