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Tilt-shift photos are very cool, but a tilt shift lens is a very expensive luxury that the majority of photographers can’t justify.  Fortunately the effect can be replicated in post processing and there are loads of great tutorials for using Photoshop.  However, for those of us that can’t afford the full fat version and have Photoshop Elements instead there’s very little on offer.  So here I aim to rectify the problem.

First of all we need a photo, tilt-shift photos are usually taken from a high vantage point and the effect is used to give photos a “model village” look to them.  The image I’m going to use in this example is one I took a couple of years ago in Prague, here is the original image:

Before you open up Elements, we need to install a plugin which mimics the layer mask function of full Photoshop.  You can download it from here (safe and legit), follow the instructions there to install it.

After you’ve done this open up your image in Elements and make the usual adjustments (levels, curves, sharpening etc).  Next duplicate the background layer and apply the layer mask effect to it (shown circled below):

Make sure you have the layer mask selected (there should be a white box around the mask rather than the normal layer) then use the gradient tool (with the rectangle gradient selection; circled below) to paint the area you want to remain in focus; start at the centre of the plane working outwards.  The easiest way to ensure your gradient is masking the correct section, is to make the background layer invisible so that the subject of your photo will disappear:

Next select the duplicated layer instead of it’s layer mask.  Then go to Filter –> Blur –> Gaussian Blur and use a radius of about 3.0 to 5.0 pixels depending on the amount of blur you want:

Finally save the image as a PSD, in case you need to come back to it, then flatten the layers (CTRL+SHIFT+E on Windows/ SHIFT+COMMAND+E on a Mac) and save as a JPEG/PNG/etc.  This should be your result:

I hope that you found this tutorial useful!  One of the most creative uses of tilt-shift photography (actual, not done in photoshop) are Keith Loutit’s time lapses on vimeo (link here) check them out for some serious inspiration.

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• Bruno Albutt 15/10/2010

  Cool. Did you come up with this method yourself?