Tilt Shift using Photoshop CS3

I saw the concept of Tilt Shift photography a while ago, after seeing a lens advertised in one of the popular monthly photography magazines. A quick delve in to the ever popular Wikipedia gives us a clue as to what its all about.

The technique has been around since the very early days of the large format camera where the front glass element could be moved independently of the other to create a sweet spot of focus.

By blurring, the viewer’s gaze may be directed away from parts of the image the photographer wishes to de-emphasize.

Ref: Wikipedia

Having seen a few Tilt-Shift style photographs, I liked the idea of being able to recreate the effect without having to invest in a lens that would probably not get much use. A quick search of the web found a few tutorials on how to create the Tilt-Shift effect using Photoshop.

The first, from VisualPhotoGuide got me quite excited about the idea, but my Photoshop version (CS3) is lacking the exact tools highlighted in the guide. So I found another guide, this time from NewPhotoGuide, which is suitable for CS3 owners.

While my choice of photo for applying this technique isn’t ideal, its a photo I haven’t previopusly uploaded to Flickr, so thought I’d make use of it for this experiment.

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