With a selection around our subject now complete, I’m going to go ahead and move it to its own layer so we can work with it separately without affecting the background. The more accurate you are now, the more time you’ll save yourself in a couple of steps. Make sure to zoom in while making your selection and get as close as you can. I turn Smart Edge on and off when selecting tricky areas, and use the Shift key when brushing on my selection and the Ctrl key to brush out a selection.

Any tool you’re most comfortable with will do - you could freehand it, use auto selection or try your hand at my personal favorite - the Selection Brush with Smart Edge. Next, make a selection around your subject. I always make a copy of my background, just in case I mess up along the way and want to start over. With our photo open in PaintShop Pro, I right-click the Background in the Layers Palette and click Duplicate. We all know horses are fast so, rather than tell a story we’ve all heard before, let’s spin a bit of a different tale with this shot… How about the classic of how this horse in the middle is coming from behind to win it all? Take a look at this photo of a horse race I’ll be using from Shutterstock. So grab a photo you’ve taken that shows off speed, action or motion (I often find sports photos are some of the best for this effect) and let’s dive into this tutorial! 1/500th – 1/1000th of a second is usually a good starting point for a lot of sports photography.īy using a photo editor like PaintShop Pro X9 from Corel, you can get the best of both worlds and mix a sharp subject with a blurry background to show off some intense speed. On the other hand, a nice crisp shot of a moving subject can make it appear as if your subject has been frozen in time, but you lose that feeling of speed.įight the blur and capture clean action shots by using high shutter speeds. The blur can help convey a sense of swift motion in your shot. We’re often left with either an extremely sharp photo or a blurry mess (and, of course, something in the middle). Trying to tell the story of speed in your photos can be a difficult task for a lot of photographers. Use Motion Blur to Add a Sense of Speed to Your Sports and Action Photos.

Paint shop pro 2020 tutorial