Tilt-Shift Photography

Tilt-Shift photography had been in the news on the web quite a bit lately. The idea is to make your photographs look like they are of miniatures, perhaps on a model train layout. It usually involves an expensive lens, but I've figured out how to do it using Photoshop Elements.

Open your photo in Photoshop.

Go to HUE & SATURATION and increase the saturation until the colors in your photo are bright, like toys.

Using either the circular marquee tool or the lasso tool, make a loose selection around the area of your photograph you wish to emphasize.

Go to SELECT>INVERSE

Go to SELECT>FEATHER and put in an amount of 20 pixels.

Go To FILTER>BLUR>GAUSSIAN BLUR and move the slider until the background of the photo is out of focus.

Go to SELECT>DESELECT and admire your train layout photo.

See the difference? The excavator is in focus while the background is blurry and the colors are intense.