Post your tilt-shift!

There was a good deal of interest in a photo in the last contest thread that used a tilt-shift effect. So I thought it would be fun to start a thread where we can post our attempts at creating Lilliputian worlds with tilt-shift lenses or post-processing that mimics their effects.

Here's my first attempt:



I just did this one quickly to try it out. I'll attempt another one when I have more time.

Anyone else have one to share?

P.S. Here's a decent tutorial.

wheelhot said:

What's tilt-shift? LOL

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I included links about it in my first post. See this one in particular:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt-shift_miniature_faking

So many great pictures!

I made another one, of Dubrovnik:

ipodtoucher said:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE your first one! This one how did you get selective? I have always wanted to do circular instead of a straigh line

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Thanks, ipodtoucher! Here's what the mask looks like for my Dubrovnik picture:



You can get any shape you want by painting the alpha channel in different shades of grey for different levels of blur.

Westside guy said:

Yes, it'd be interesting to know what lens you're using - e.g. is it a real tilt-shift, a Lens Baby, etc.

This "miniature" effect is quite interesting, but there are other things you can do with a tilt-shift. Bjørn Rorslett has some stunning photos he's taken with one.

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Yeah, good point. We should at least mention what route we took. Mine are all Photoshop creations, so the lens makes no difference. For example, here's one I made from a point-and-shoot photo:

(Lindos Town, Rhodes)

thomahawk said:

well i used photoshop on mine, i cant seem to figure out the different shades of blur, in this case i wanted to make it more stronger and blurier from the outside to lighter towards the middle like how Phrasikleia did, but im too dumb to use masks and stuff. i did set the strength to 100 but i wanted more power! lol oh well, this was a 1st try for me

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I think your photo came out really well! Using a mask is easy. Here's how you do it:

1) Go to the channel palette and press the "new" button to create a new alpha channel.

2) Use the gradient tool to paint a gradient from black to white to black on that channel.

3) Then in the Lens Blur filter controls, select your gradient channel ("Alpha 1", unless you renamed it) as the "Source" in the "Depth Map" area. If the wrong areas are blurred, click "Invert" there too.

4) Play with the "Radius" slider until you get the degree of blur that looks best.

5) If you see that some areas need selective attention, cancel out of the Lens Blur filter and do some more painting on your alpha channel. Experiment with different shades of grey on your alpha channel.

Repeat steps 3-5 until you get the right effect.

Have fun!