How to apply the radial blur effect in Photoshop

Posted on September 7, 2008 at 5:28 am

Radial blur is one of the powerful filter tools you can apply to your photos to give them an emitting light effect. It is best used to achieve an expressive feeling of love or happiness and even spiritual power. If you want your pictures to glow, then this tip is for you!

Before we get started, make sure to check out my other Photoshop tutorials, such as how to retouch photos in Photoshop and how to remove red-eye using Photoshop. Also, check out my post on how to swap colors using IrfanView.

To apply the radial blur effect, select an image file that you want (preferably an object with dark background to easily see the radiant glow) and open it using Adobe Photoshop. For this demo, I will use the picture of a white rose below:

Create a copy of the image’s layer by right clicking the mouse then choose Duplicate Layer:

Go back to your original Layer. In the Filter menu, choose Blur then click Radial Blur:

The Radial Blur dialog box will pop-out. Set the Blur level to 100, Blur method to Zoom and quality to Good:

Change the Blend mode from Normal to Lighten:

You can also adjust Fill and Opacity by adjusting the percentage values:

There are no hard and exact rules here, you will need to adjust the parameters depending on your desired output which you should see real time as you adjust the parameters. Experiment with different combinations until you get your desired outcome.

Finally, here is the output of the steps above:

The effect is subtle and it gives a sense of a radiant light coming from the rose. This is best for photos taken from weddings and other controlled portrait shots that you want to have a glowing effect.

Here are few other examples of radial blur I found on the Net:

1. how to apply radial blur in the background, useful for non-dark background: http://www.picturecorrect.com/photoshoptips/radialblur.htm

2. Play with Radial blur (with the focused subject not in the center): http://www.webdesign.org/web/photoshop/photo-editing/photo-effect—play-with-radial-blur-in-adobe-photoshop.15106.html