How to make regular photos look like miniature models

You may have come across photographs that make something normal (like a street with cars) look like a miniature model. Normally, this effect is created by something called tilt-shift photography, which requires a specific lens that can be extremely expensive. Although you can learn to create this effect through photography if you want, it is easier (and cheaper) to achieve it by using a digital photo editing program. In this tutorial, we're going to see how to recreate a tilt-shift effect using Photoshop CS4.

First, find the picture you want to use. I'm using a stock photo of a city from Morguefile, but you can use any photo you'd like, as long as it was taken from an angle that is higher than the object you want to focus on. Once you've found your photograph, open it in Photoshop and select the gradient tool from the Tools panel on the left hand side of the workspace. If you don't see the gradient tool, click the little black arrow at the corner of the paint bucket tool to show more options.



Click the drowdown arrow next to the gradient preview bar and choose the black to white gradient. Then, choose the reflected gradient type from the options next to the preview bar (it's the second to last one).



Press the Q key to enter quick mask mode. Then find one of the taller buildings and click a third of the way from the top, dragging the gradient down a little (but don't drag it all the way down). You may need to keep playing with this until you're satisfied with the selection (it will show up in red).



Press the Q key again to exit quick mask mode. The marching ants marquee should appear everywhere but the selection you made in quick mask mode. Now we're ready to add a blur to make it look like the photograph is being taken from closer than it is. Go to the top bar and click Filter, then Blur, then Lens Blur.



A preview window that fills the whole screen will appear. Keep the default settings (unless you wish to play around with them) except for the radius, which will be changed to 20. This will change the amount of blur in the picture.



Once you've applied the Lens blur, you can leave it at that if you want - or you can play with adjustments to enhance the picture a bit more. I wanted to adjust the saturation and the contrast, so I decided to add some adjustment layers. To do this, I clicked on Layer, then New Adjustment Layer, then Hue/Saturation.



The adjustments window should appear in the panels on the right hand side of the screen. I dragged mine out of the panels, but you can leave yours where it is. Play around with the saturation until you're satisfied with the way the picture looks; I changed mine to 30.



Go back to the top bar and click on Layer and New Adjustment Layer again. This time, select Brightness/Contrast from the list of options. I just wanted to darken the contrast a little bit, so I set the contrast to 5. If you'd prefer a different value, then you can play around and find what looks best for the photo you're using.



And that's it! Creating a tilt-shift effect in Photoshop isn't hard and it doesn't take that long. The most time will be spent figuring out where you want the blur to be and tweaking the adjustments.

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