Painterly Glow Effect In Photoshop CS3
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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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. Here's my image after applying the third Motion Blur:
Next, we'll finish things off by grouping layers together and masking away some of the blur effect!