STEP by STEP / Tilt-shift a train in Photoshop CC

1 Use Tilt-shift

Open tilt-shift_before. Go to Window>layers and hit Cmd/ctrl+j to duplicate the ‘Background’ layer, then right-click on the duplicate and Convert to Smart Object. Next go to Filter>blur Gallery>tilt-shift. Drag the centre point over the front of the train.

3 Select the steam

Here the top of the steam looks unnaturally blurry. Click the eye icon to hide the top layer and highlight the bottom layer. Grab the Quick Selection tool and paint over the steam to select it. Once done, hit Cmd/ctrl+j to copy it to a new layer.

5 Clone away the edges

Grab the Clone tool and set Sample: All Layers at the top. We want to roughly clone away the edge of the steam, so that the blur doesn’t show in our main image. Alt-click to sample nearby details from the trees and paint to clone. Once done, close the image and save when prompted.

2 Fine-tune the blur

Use the circular dial to fine-tune the effect. Drag the horizontal lines to change the transitions between sharp and soft (Alt-drag to adjust both top and bottom at once). Increase the noise amount to add noise to the blurry areas so that the grain matches the sharp parts. Hit OK.

4 Open the smart layer

Drag the steam layer to the top of the stack and reveal the blurred layer. The steam has blurry edges from the layer below. Double-click the layer thumbnail on the blurred layer to open the smart object in a new window. Click the New Layer icon in the Layers panel.

6 Boost the tones

Finally, we’ll use a blending mode trick to boost the contrast and colour. Highlight the top layer, click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and choose Levels. Next choose the Overlay blending mode in the Layers panel. Lower the layer opacity slightly to tone it down.