Creating Tilt-Shift Lens Effects With Photoshop

I am always looking at ways I can play around with photography, both outside with my camera or at home on the computer. The ability to take a photograph and make it look like a model is a pretty cool effect. Typically created with Tilt-Shift lenses, you can create your own Tilt-Shift type effect without spending hundreds of dollars.

The Tilt-Shift effect is for photos of objects that look miniature with a model likeness to them. Who isn’t fascinated with miniature representations of places they have been to, or objects that are of interest? I know I think it’s a pretty cool effect.

I am not going to show screenshots or a screencast but it does not take very long to produce a fake Tilt-Shift when using a program such as Photoshop. You should be familiar with quick-masks, gradients as well as the blur lens filter. That’s basically all I used to create my quick-n-dirty tilt-shift effect on my photos.

Royal Caribbean – Radiance of the Seas

I find that it is best to find a photo that has a bunch of objects and preferably shot from above, this helps give the effect of small miniatures. I’ve been playing with numerous photos and the ones that work best are of these type.

WestCoast Air – Twin Otter

If you click on either of the above photo it will overlay the larger image. Unfortunately I do not have a larger one of the cruise ship photo as when I saved it, I only saved it at a maximum of 800 pixel wide. At full resolution the tilt-shift effect, via Photoshop, was pretty impressive.

The idea behind using Photoshop to create a tilt-shift effect is pretty straight forward and does not involve many steps.

• Enter Quick-Mask Mode (‘q’ in Photoshop)
• Select the Gradient Tool (ensure Reflected Gradient is chosen)
• Draw a short line in the opposite direction you wish to have tilt-shifted. For the above photo I would center the Gradient tool in the middle of the plane, and drag upwards and a bit to the left.
• Leave Quick-Mask mode and choose Filters->Blur->Lens Blur. I typically just use the default settings.
• Apply the settings

Voila! Your fake tilt-shift effect should look pretty cool. You can also choose to increase the saturation a bit to give it a more toyish feel.

The actual tutorial I first tied out was over at TiltShiftPhotography.net. They have photos on the step-by-step process.