Creating Zoom effect on Photoshop

In my last article I gave you an introduction to the zoom effect on digital photography and showed you how to shoot it with your camera. This effect however is very difficult to master and can be recreated in photoshop with practically identical, or even better results. This is what we're going to learn today.

First of all choose a suitable picture. It can be anything with a subject you want to make stand out. I chose this picture of my bike standing aside a bike trail.

Now you only have to go to filters->blur->radial blur. Here you select the amount of blur, you have to select zoom and you have to select the center of the blur effect (this is the point you want to be in focus). Also I recommend setting the quality to optimal.

Now take a look at the image, if you're satisified with the result then that's it, if not you can try changing the amount and the center of the blur until you like the result.

Also there is a way of making your whole subject stay in focus. If you only follow the steps detailed above, you'll end up with only a small focused point. If you're subject is large however, it will probably be out of focus. But don't worry there is a very easy way to fix that. Select your subject and copy it to another layer, now apply the effect on the background layer and your subject will remain in perfect focus. To select the subject I recommend using quick mask mode (pressing Q) and then painting it all. Once you're done get out of quick mask mode (Q again) and invert the selecion. Now you only have to copy that selection to another layer and you'll have your subject isolated from the background.

Now when you apply the effect on the background, your subject won't be blurred since it's in a separated layer. This is what it will look like:

And that's how you fake zoom effect on photoshop! I hope you found this tutorial useful, also I let you another example here:

Zooming technique

And on we go with the slow shutter speed effects series! We learned how to do panning, how to fake it on the pc, and now we're going to learn how to use the zooming technique.

This is a very simple technique but can achieve some neat results when applied correctly. It consists of zooming your lens in or out while the shutter is open. This creates a kind of tunnel effect towards the center achieving a sense of speed.

Similarily to panning this technique requires the shutter speed to be the correct one. Slow enough to create the zooming blur, but fast enough to allow for a sharp image in the center. As always this speed will depend on your hands stability, focal length and whether you have image stabilisation enabled. I recommend you to use something between 1/10 and 1/60, take into consideration, that the faster you set the shutter speed, the faster you have to zoom in or out to make the image appear blurred in the corners.
If you have the time you can set a tripod and a slower shutter speed, say 1/2 por example and zoom in slowly, which will give you more stability.

Once you have set the correct shutter speed (Use shutter speed priority mode ) set your subject, or whatever part of the scene you want to be sharp, in the center of the image. Now click the shutter and zoom your lens in or out while it's open. This will blur the edges of the image, creating the zoom effect.

Also, you can combine the zooming in with panning to change the part of the image that remains sharp. For example, if you zoom in while pan the camera to the right, the sharp area will be on the right side of the image. Combining both effects however can be too difficult to the point that it becomes frustrating, so I would recommend you to reproduce the effect later on on photoshop if you want the sharp area not to be in the center. In my next post I'll show you how to do that easily, so stay tuned!