TILT SHIFT

You can make an ordinary photo appear to be a picture of a miniature model. ‘Tilt-shift’ is the general term for any miniature faking technique. It doesn't take much to fool the eye, but there are a couple hints to follow to help convince a viewer that they're looking at, for example, a railway set rather than the real world.1. Miniature models are usually viewed from above so try and choose a photo with an elevated viewpoint. Buildings, roads, traffic and railways are excellent choices but make sure there is a reasonable wide angle of view and taken from above.

3. Select the Quick Mask icon in the Tool Bar

4. Select the Gradient Tool icon and then in the Options Bar, choose the Reflected Gradient option (the fourth icon along before the Mode drop-down).

5. To adjust the Gradient, Click and hold your mouse to draw a vertical line. Start in the center of your photo and draw downward and end where you want to end the in-and-out-of-focus transition. You may have to readjust the line until you get the effect you want.

6. Once you release the mouse button the area of focus will appear as a red band across the image.

7. View the Mask Area Before progressing. Review the position of the red mask. The middle of the mask is where the in-focus area will be, gradually losing focus towards the edges. Note the out-of-focus effect is yet to be applied.

8. Return to Standard Mode by pressing the

9. Open Lens Blur Interface On the Menu Bar, choose Filter > Blur > Lens Blur:standard mode icon on the Tool Palette. The area to apply the focus effect will be surrounded by the “marching ants” selection lines:

10. Review Effect and Tweak Settings Hopefully, you will now see a pleasing focus effect. The Photoshop default settings for Lens Blur seem to work well, but experiment with them to improve the effect. If you are unhappy with the position of the focus area, go back to Step 4 and try drawing a line in a different place or with a different center of focus.

11. Exit Lens Blur Interface assuming you were happy with the image preview in the previous step, click OK to accept the settings

12. On the Menu Bar, click Select>Deselect to remove the “marching ants” selection boundary:

13. To make the images more ‘toy-like’ you will need to boost the color saturation. Remember that model scenery is often brightly painted so enhancing the saturation helps trick the eye. On the Menu Bar select Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation:

14. Boost Saturation In this example, we boost the Master saturation to +40

15. Open Curves Adjustment Interface. It may help to increase the contrast of the image slightly using the Curves adjustment. On the Menu Bar select Image > Adjustments > Curves

16. Adjust Curves In this example we use a very small S-shaped curve to increase contrast. Take care not to over-do this step; in fact, it may not be necessary at all.