Create a Fast Moving Car with a Parked Car Picture

In this photoshop tutorial I will run you through some easy ways to create a fast moving car illusion with a picture of a parked car.


First download this picture or use any other parked car picture you want to use

Open up the picture and the first thing I am going to do is copy the car out of the image.
To do this I will use the quick mask tool to make a selection around the car.
Go ahead and duplicate the car and hide it for a backup.
Next hit “q” on your keyboard which will put you in “quick mask” mode. Now use paint brushes to paint all around the car, covering all of the area. Zoom in to be more accurate. If you mess up and color over the car hit “x” on your keyboard to change the foreground color to white which will allow you to paint back the area you went over.

Here it is all masked

Hit “q” again after you are done and it will make a selection around the car.

Now I will copy the car with ctrl+c and paste it back in the document with ctrl+v.
Once you do that the image should look exactly the same. Now on my original layer I will add motion blur to it by going to filter>>blur>>motion blur with these settings


After that my image looks like this

Ok pretty good so far but the tires need to look like they are spinning right?
So to do this I will use some rulers and my elliptical marquee tool to select around each tire and copy and paste them back in the image.
So hit ctrl+r to bring up your rulers. Put a guide on top, bottom, left, and right
of each tire.
Do them one at a time.

Now get your elliptical marquee tool and make a selection around the rim of the
wheel. Make sure the cross hairs turn red within the guidelines as you can see
in the next screenshot.

This method allows you to make a more accurate selection around round objects.

I copied and pasted the left wheel back in the document and named it left wheel.
Do the same to the right one.
Now I will click on my “left wheel” layer and hold down ctrl and click on the preview icon beside the layer in the palette window. This will make a selection around the wheel rim.
Now go to filter>>blur>>radial blur and use these settings:


Now the wheel should look like this

Now do the same to the right wheel.
I am not sure if you have noticed but when you are driving by someone on the highway you can see the brakes and calipers through the wheels because they are spinning so fast. So I am going to blend in some brakes and brake calipers on both wheels.
So download this picture or any other you have of brakes and calipers

Now cut that picture out so it has no background behind it. Place it in the middle of the right wheel and size it down to make it fit the car..

After you do that set the blending mode to “lighten” and its opacity to 70%. Here is what it should look like

After that just duplicate that layer and move it over the other wheel.
**UPDATE**
I decided to take an extra step to get rid of the “ghost” of the car by advice from readers except I will not use the clone stamp tool to do this.
To fix this I will place the original image back in the document that has none of the motion blur effect. Now I will hide that layer and make a selection with the pen tool around the “ghost” of the car in the other image that has the blur effect. Copy more than just around the ghost to have plenty of area around it.

After making that selection I will copy that from the original image with no blur effect and paste it back in the canvas.
Now that I have that done I will cut the car out of the un-blurred layer by using the ctrl+click technique on my already cut-out car layer to make a selection.
Remove the car and add the same motion blur as before but now you will get a white “ghost blur” which I will fix with the previous steps I took.

So from the previous steps I copied out an un-blurred selection from the original image. This image I copied has the car in the copied portion which I don’t want. So yet again I will use the ctrl+click technique to make a selection around it and cut it out. After that I will use motion blur on that layer which will mostly get rid of the white “ghost” but just duplicate it 2 more times to totally get rid of it.
Now your car should look like it is moving fast! Thanks for reading!