Sport and Action Photography, page 5: Editing in Photoshop

Sports Photography and Photoshop
There's no reason why you shouldn't improve your action images with a little post-production ‘tweaking’ in Photoshop. With that in mind, here are a couple of common tweaks that could make all the difference to the quality of your final image.

Tip One – Action Comp
Do you have several great action images of an event? Rather than display one picture, make a simple composition of several in Photoshop, then output the file to larger poster paper.

Step One: Open the chosen images in Photoshop. Use Window>Arrange>Tile to view them all on screen. Resize each photo (Image>Image Size) so they are all similar dimensions. Create a new document big enough to encompass all images.

Step Two: Select the new document, do View>Show>Grid, and ensure the View>Snap to>Grid option is activated. Click each picture and drag them onto the new document's canvas. Use the grid to align each picture.

Step Three: Open the Layers palette. Notice that each of the 'dragged' images have created a new layer. Add a simple drop shadow or stroked line to each image by selecting the layer and then selecting Layer>Layer Style>Drop Shadow.

Tip Two – Motion Blur Filter
Add blur to a frozen subject to recapture a sense of movement. To retain some sharp elements and add blurry ones, we will apply Motion Blur through a graded selection.

Step One: Click on the Quick Mask icon, bottom right of the toolbar. Double click it and select Masked Areas. Choose the Gradient tool and select Radial Gradient from the options bar. Click drag the tool from the helmet towards the edge of the shot to create a Quick Mask gradient.

Step Two: To switch back to Standard editing mode, click the Standard Mode icon. The mask will be converted to an active selection. Do Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and adjust the Distance and Angle of the blur. Click OK to apply.