Create the toy-town look
James Paterson uses filters selectively to mimic the look of a tilt-shift lens
Use Photoshop CC to mimic a tilt-shift lens for this fantastic effect
On a normal lens the plane of focus – or in other words, the sharp parts of the scene – remains parallel to the camera’s sensor, and we move the plane forwards or backwards in the scene by focusing the lens. But a tilt-shift lens offers a different view. By tilting the front element, it’s possible to angle the plane of focus diagonally across the scene. This results in interesting depth-of-field effects, where the dynamic between what’s sharp and what’s soft can be manipulated in creative ways.
One such effect is the toy-town look. By using a high angle, tilting the lens diagonally and shooting down on a wide, sweeping scene, it’s possible to blur the foreground and background in an unnatural way. As we’re not used to seeing blur on wide scenes like this, it looks almost as if the scene is in miniature. This is because the shallow blur matches that of a close-up lens.
If you don’t have access to one of these specialist, pricey lenses, then you can get similar results with Photoshop filters. The dedicated Tilt-shift Blur filter is the obvious starting point, but we can take it further by selectively controlling the blur with selections and masks, to make it look as if the parts of the scene that would naturally be closer – like the steam here – remain sharp while the areas behind it are blurred.