Adobe Tutorial: Create an Instant Background With Photoshop

by Zaid Al-Hilali

Want an instant background for a project, desktop image when nothing inspires you? Take an image – just about any will do – and apply motion blur to it, here are the steps:

STEP ONE: Look in the Layers Palette, I assume that you have a single layer in your palette there, so we shall duplicate this layer twice to apply our effect to them. From Layer menu on top, choose New > Layer via copy, a new layer
named Layer 1 is created, repeat the step one more time to have a second layer.

STEP TWO: Select the middle layer in the Layers palette by clicking on it once, then Choose Filter > Blur > Motion Blur.

STEP THREE: In the motion Blur window take the slider all the way to the right, play a little with the angle rotation tool until you are satisfied with the result and hit OK button. Don’t worry about nothing changing yet, because your top layer is not affected yet, only the middle layer which is hidden is affected.

STEP FOUR: Select top most layer by clicking once on it. Open the same Filter window and this time take the slider down a bit, and don’t forget to change the angle.
STEP FIVE: Now in the Layer Palette click on the Blending mode drop menu and choose any effect that suits your image to blend the color and light of top layer.

This method of creating a background is simple and it can result in some very nice effects.

Alternative method

For instant background with a feeling of depth apply the following steps to any image of yours, but first choose your two foreground and background colors.

STEP ONE: Choose Render > Clouds filter. This will result in your image being turned into something blurred, almost looking like clouds.

STEP TWO : Then use Blur > Radial Blur with an amount of 100 and Zoom as the Blur Method.

STEP THREE: Next step is to Use the Distort > Pinch filter using 100 as the amount. You can apply this last filter several times to make the effect more pronounced.

STEP FOUR: For final step you can use Image >
Adjustments > Hue Saturation to colorize your image further by increasing Saturation and sliding Hue. In the example image this is exaggerated.