Top Tip – Tilt-Shift
Its a beautiful day here today, so nice in fact I’ve got my shorts on (apologies if you’re eating). No blog tomorrow, I’m off gallivanting once again. In Birmingham (the real one in the UK) tomorrow night watching the WWE. Should be fun.
Out Now
Podcast
Martini Hour : In Which Colleen Lures Back John and Russell with Olives!
Scott is back, but Matt is missing because of a visit to the doctor. Aside from the normal tutorial content, Rick Sammon returns with another installment of Snap Shots to Great Shots.
Tutorial
Dont forget to go see part 2 of “Creases” Challenge Tutorial
Top Tip – Easy Tilt-Shift Effect
The idea behind Tilt-shift is that the photo you have is made to look like a model. Now you could go and buy a new lens for this purpose, or you could do this…
For this tip I’ve gone to Stock.xchng and downloaded an image of the beautiful city of Edinburgh.
Press Q to enter into Quick mask mode
Choose the gradient tool reflected gradient 
in the options bar. While you’re there make sure Reverse is un-checked.
Starting on the part of the image you want in focus, draw out the gradient.
Press Q To exit quick mask mode and go to the filter menu and choose, Filter-Blur-Lens Blur. For this image I stuck to the defaults but feel free to have a play around. Then Press OK.
Press Ctr(cmd)+D to deselect and we are almost there. It looks a bit model-like, but let’s increase the saturation a bit.
Press Ctr(Cmd)+U to get the Hue/Saturation panel and whack up the saturation slider.
And there you are. All done.
There are some really great examples available on Flicker too
Have a great Tuesday, and Wednesday.
Hi
What version of Photoshop are you using?
Do you know if Photoshop Elements 9 has the lens blur/tiltshift effect?
Thanks
Adam
Hi Adam,
In the video I’m using CS5 but the Lens blur has been in Photoshop for some time. Elements has several blur features that will do a similar effect but not the Lens Blur feature.