Theo Aronow

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How to Recreate the Blurred Punk Effect in Photoshop

The blurred punk effect has been a popular effect in grunge and punk graphic design trends. The first step to achieve this look is to pick a good subject.

The next step is to select the subject and remove her from the background. To do this I used the photoshop select subject function to primarily select her. Then I used the refine brush tool in the refine mask workplace to fix the selection errors in her hair. Then we use the selection to mask out the background.

The next step is to add the blur effect. To do this we duplicate the subject layer with the command ctrl-j. Then we go into filter > blur > motion blur. Then set the angle to 0 degrees and the distance to around 200.

Then we create a mask of the layer. Then use the brush tool to paint over half of the subject.

Now that we have the blur effect, we can create the grunge/punk aesthetic. To do this easily, we can use the filter gallery. Once you open up the filter gallery window, add some film grain. Add Grain (5) Highlight Area (3) and Intensity (3). This will give the image a grunge texture. Next, we add a torn edges effect. Add Image Balance (17) Smoothness (15) and Contrast (1).

The image should look like this after the filter gallery effects. If you want, you can stop here. However to add a final touch I added a gradient map.

Congratulations! You are finished and can now export your work.