Yellow Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaab .............

[msol]

I was lucky this time with a dragging photo. Pity the tail of the car isn't on it.

[[blur]]

I love it. Nice blur. It is too bad you missed the back end. Great saturation in the cab. Mind if I play with it? I'll post my results. No worries otherwise.
Just FYI the tech. term for this is "panning".

I like your pano shots as well.

[msol]

Hi Blur,
Please go-ahead and play with it.
Oh yeh! Panning... I knew it... once... Now I know again. Thanks.
And I'm glad you like my panorama's.

[[blur]]

Hi Marc,

Just boosted the contrast. Added some noise. Blending overlay. Darkened the corners. And cropped of course.

The shot reminded me of one of those gritty TV crime dramas. Be cool if you could get a cop car or a fire truck.

[msol]

Ha! I like that result. Thanks. There is drama! I never tried such extreme manipulation. I always do the usual levels, curves, sharpening, and sometimes some saturation to improve the shot. I've learned to do small subtile changes. But you really added drama.
Did that just happen or did you have that in mind when you asked whether you could play with it? If its the latter, could you then explain how you spotted that opportunity?
And about the cop car or fire truck... that'll have to wait a while. This was my first time to NYC (I live in the Netherlands). I have no idea when I'll be there again.

[[blur]]

That's basically what i had in mind.
It's a technique I've applied to quite a few of my own images. I thought it would work well on this image of yours. It works better with some than others. Sometimes you have to tone it down because it comes out too strong. You just use the opacity slider to tone it down. I added the noise(grain) after I applied the overlay technique.
I made a Photoshop action for this particular effect (I can't take credit for it; got the idea elsewhere).
If you have PS Elements or a later version of Photoshop I can list the steps if you'd like.

Anyway, I'm glad you like it.

[msol]

I understand that this technique doesn't work on all images.
I have PS, so please do list the steps.
Thanks.

[[blur]]

No problem. It's super simple. I made an action to do it for me:

- Open image
- Duplicate background layer
- Apply Gaussian blur with a radius of 20 pixels (I'm generally working with large files, you may want to set this lower for smaller files; play around until you get the look you like)
- Make sure top layer is selected and change the blend mode(drop down on the layers palette) to overlay
- Adjust intensity using the opacity slider. Note: Be careful it can really blow out highlights
Voila!
As i said before I added the grain , etc. after this.
Have fun, I'm going to bed. It's 1 am here. Goodnight!