From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

733 Creating a galaxy of rushing stars

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

733 Creating a galaxy of rushing stars

- In this movie, we're going to take our tranquil space portal, and we're gonna make the stars appear to rush away. In order to create a higher degree on contrast between the region outside the portal and the galaxy within. And we're gonna be doing so using one of the oldest filters inside Photoshop; radial blur. Which is made more powerful when you apply it as a dynamic smart filter. Alright, so I'll go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of the layers panel, and I'll select the background. Now we wanna apply radial blur to that background, but we wanna do so dynamically. So I'm gonna start things off by converting this guy to a smart object. So first, I'll double click on the background to bring up the new layer dialog box. And I'll call this layer rush, and then I'll click okay. And now, armed with my rectangular marquis tool, which is available to me up here at the top of the tool box, I'll right click anywhere inside the image window, and I'll choose convert to smart object. Now what you wanna do, is go up to the filter menu, choose blur, and choose radial blur. Now, notice that I've se the blur method to zoom. And I've cranked the amount value up to 20. The quality if good, is just fine. Now, one of the big problems with this filter, because it's so very, very old, is it has a terrible preview. You can't preview the effect out here inside the image window. And one of the reasons for that, is it's a very processor intensive filter. And so instead, what you do, is you drag this little guy around. So it starts off there in the center, which means everything's gonna rush outward from the center, and you can see what that looks like, just by clicking okay. At which point you'll see that the stars are rushing outward from the center of the image, which is right about here. I wanna move that center up to about this location. And the way you do that, is to scroll down to the bottom of the layers panel once again, and double click on the words radial blur, in order to revisit that dialog box. And then just drag this guy up, and a little bit to the left as well. And then click okay to see the results. In my case, I didn't get it exactly right. So I'm gonna double click on radial blur again, to revisit that dialog box, and I'll drag this guy down a little bit and click okay. And to my eyes, that looks a lot better. Alright, now I don't want to blur this region inside the portal, and so I'm gonna protect it using a filter mask. And so the first step, is to load this layer mask right here, which you can do by pressing the control key, or the command key on the Mac, and clicking on it. And that'll go ahead and select around the entire rings, including around the inside edge as well. Now, currently the inside is deselected, I wanna select it by going up to the select menu and choosing the inverse command or you have that keyboard shortcut of control shift I, or command shift I on the Mac. Now I just want keep this region right here. I don't wanna select the area outside the rings in other words. Which is where that original circle selection, that we used along with content aware fill, comes into play. And to get to it, go up to the window menu, and choose the channels command. And you'll notice this alpha channel called circle. What you wanna do, is find the intersection of the current selection and that circle, and you do that by pressing and holding all three of the modifier keys. That's gonna be control, shift, and alt here on a PC. That's command, shift, and option on the Mac. At which point, your cursor will change to a little pointing finger with an x in it. And so, if you control, shift, alternative, click, or command, shift, option click, on that circle channel, then you will keep just that region inside the ring selected. Next I'll switch back to the layers panel, and I'll go ahead and drop down to this rush layer right there, and I'll click on this filter mask, which is currently white. And then you want to tap the D key, for your default masking colors, which are white for the foreground color, and black for the background color. We wanna fill the selection with black, and you do that by pressing control, backspace, or command, delete, on the Mac. At which point, you can click off the selection, to deselect it. And now notice, that the galaxy inside the portal is no longer blurred. Alright now, I want a more interesting interaction between the blur and the stars, and so I'm gonna double click on this little slider icon, to the right of the words radial blur. Down here in the bottom right corner of the layers panel. And I'll just go ahead and change the blend mode to screen, in order to produce this very bright effect here. And now I'll click okay. Alright, now I wanna add some additional trailers to my stars. And I'm gonna do so, with another application of radial blur. And so I'll return to the filter menu, and choose that very first command, which is gonna be radial blur. Because we're working with a smart object, that's gonna force a display of the radial blur dialog box complete with our last settings. They're just fine, so click okay, in order to reapply them like so. And then, go ahead and scroll down a little bit. This radial blur at the top, is the most recent application of the filter. I wanna blend it, by double clicking on its slider icon, in order to once again visit the blending options dialog box. And this time, I'm gonna change the blend mode to lighten, in order to keep just those pixels that are lighter than the ones before them, at which point I'll click okay, in order to apply that effect. Alright, now I'll go ahead and zoom in a little bit. By modifying this custom zoom value down here in the bottom left corner of the window. And then I'll press shift, F, in order to switch to the full screen mode. And that's how you make the stars appear to rush away in order to create a higher degree of contrast between the region outside the portal, and the destination galaxy within. Using the old school radial blur filter, repeated and blended as a pair of dynamic smart filters here inside Photoshop.

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