A "faux" tilt shift lens tutorial...

Not sure why, but I am a big fan of the tilt shift lens "look".

Though it's the price that keeps me away from the real thing.

So here is a quick and easy tutorial on creating the "tilt shift look" in Photoshop.

Just one thing before we jump into the tutorial, the best shots for these are wide(r) angle shots from above. And of course the image I am using for the tutorial is neither.

This was an image I took during the "Occupy" protests and I really wanted the focus to be on the young lady and her sign.

So here we go:

1. Open up your image in Photoshop

2. The first thing is to duplicate your image by either dragging it to the "create a new layer" icon, or keyboard command Ctrl + J on a PC or CMD + J on a MAC

3. Then go to "Filters", "Blur", "Gaussian Blur" and set the Radius to (roughly) 10

4. Add a mask to the layer that you created (and blurred)

5. Set you foreground color to white and background color to black

6. With the mask you just created in step 5 selected, use the Marquee tool to select the area that you will want to be in focus

7. Fill that selected area with black (PC - Ctrl + Back-Space, Mac - CMD + Delete)

8. Then deselect (PC - Ctrl + D, Mac - CMD + D)

9. Keeping the mask selected you will then go to the "Masks" tab and adjust the feathering to make it a bit smoother (around 70)

10. Select your curves layer to add contrast by creating an "S" curve

11. Then back to the adjustments tab and select "Vibrance" and adjust to taste

And the finished product.

Keep in mind the numbers I used are not necessarily the ones that will work for you, but they are a good starting point. I would love to see what you come up with.