TiltShift Makes Your Photos Look Like Miniatures

Ah Takayuki Fukatsu! I love his apps. Check out Toycamera and Quadcamera if you have an iPhone. great stuff!

Thermoptic

@courtarro: Just lurking through the comments and I must say, your miniaturization is awesome. Truly.

@MyPetFly: use fish-eye lens..it'll put a smile on that face

This feature has been available on Picasa since it came out. Why use this when Picasa offers a whole panoply of filters and gewgaws. It's cool, but not new...

Mike Ashland

@Hello Mister Walrus: So did you use a tilt-shift lens for these sweet photos or is this using the TiltShift software?

You KNOW an effect is trendy when it's got a webapp/plugin for it. Shortcuts and presets are useful for popular glee! Tilt-shift is one, Web 2.0 reflections + rounded corners are others, and others come to mind like bokeh photography. Which can look pretty delicious and enhance the appearance of virtual worlds, too:

This only gives you a circular vignette blur, which doesn't seem to give "miniature" results.

This GIMP tutorial gives a pretty reasonable quick result.
[gimparoo.blogspot.com]

@courtarro: Agreed, this doesn't achieve the same results as any of the other tools.

Your results are amazing, courtarro, btw.

@Hello Mister Walrus: Wow, yes those are cool.

jkrell

Thanks for the site!

Lensbaby makes cheap tiltshift lenses

[lensbaby.com]

Here's a good example of tilt-shifting for those who aren't familiar: [www.vimeo.com]

It's a movie, but you'll get the point.

David Bakin

@jkrell: Sorry, the photo is just my quick thrown together example from one of my Flickr pics... though, honestly, I do kind of like it. Clearly the examples above are much better, though.

Here is tilt-shift: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/16/beautiful-examples-of-tilt-shift-photogr.../

AdalAesacus

Even doing tilt-shift in Photoshop doesn't give an accurate result. For instance, let's say the top of a pole that's 50 feet away is at the same area of a picture where the horizon is. Using blurring filters will blur the top of the pole as much as the horizon. Careful masking can help solve that problem, but there isn't an automated way to do this with every picture.

@jkrell: That's a bad example photo. Here are some better ones:

@jkrell: I've seen tilt-shift done right and it looks great. That picture up top, not so much.

@jkrell: The person who made this app doesn't really understand tilt-shift miniaturization. This program simply creates a focus point and increasingly blurs as it moves away from that point, which has nothing to do with tilt-shift. It needs a lot of work before it is doing anything useful.

@Adam: Oh lol "TiltShift works either on its web page (where it's Flash-based)"

Maybe i shouldnt have stayed up untill 1AM... :p

I cant brain, my think isnt working

@courtarro: Now that I look closer, I notice that the focus isn't a vertical line - it's a spot with a circular blur, which is even worse. You'll never get a miniaturized effect that way.

@courtarro: Another point of interest: the most effective miniaturizations use more than one gradient, but it's very tricky to get it right in all but the simplest situations.

I created one of these a while back, picking a photo that was mostly made of flat surfaces and was shot from generally overhead. Here is the end result:

[www.hydrous.net]

The original photo and the focus gradient:

[photos.hydrous.net]

[www.hydrous.net]

I have to ask, what is the point of this and how is this supposed to look miniature? The sample just looks like a crappy photo to me.

jkrell

@Adam: It's web-based, too, so you don't have to download anything if you don't want to.

If this werent a single use application, I would probably download it, but if only does 1 thing, wouldn't it be a waste of hard disk space?

Why do people use a vertical line for focus, as shown in the example photo? That's almost never realistic, as the ground is typically the element of the photo that changes distance linearly ... so the focus line should be parallel to it.

@four12:

"...applied to an inappropriate image..."

Yes, I make it a point to never miniaturize the look of my genitals in photos.

; )

Fake tilt-shift can be a fun toy to play with in your digital darkroom, but it is often over-done or applied to an inappropriate image.

four12

@four12: Fake HDR can be a fun toy to play with in your digital darkroom, but it is often over-done or applied to an inappropriate image.

Fixed. I've seen FAR more instances of over-used HDR than tilt-shift. And to mind-garbling effects, to boot.

Great little program! May have to play around with this sometime.

If im not mistaken though, i believe (yes this is not all that relevant) the photo was taken at Dodger's Stadium..sadly during the championship series where they killed off my beloved Chicago Cubs.

Tim Myers

This does not work on anything over 1600px in either dimension. That makes it a bit of a fail in my book. If they corrected that this may be more worthwhile.

Jamie S

I believe there's a node that can do this in Aviary's Peacock app as well.

AtomFury

@muteboy: (and @geeky_reader) ... thanks guys!

@David Bakin: You had to post this video didn't you? Every time I watch it it makes me inexplicably emotional!

It's an amazing video. Truly. :)

@David Bakin: OMG Thanks for the link Dave! This guys work is amazing! Just aded it to my Vimeo Faves

Nic Ebright

BRILLIANT!

SloYerRoll

If every shmuck and their dog is going to use this effect, I don't want it, to see or to try. It just gets corny in a hurry. Even though it's pricey, I'd sooner go for the lenses.

paintbox

@Torley: what kind of post-processing did you do here?

SamburgerHandwich

@Thomas James Hole:

By belows i meant bellows.

Thomas James Hole

"expensive special lenses"

For the record tilt shift lens for DSLRs won't give you this effect.

However any belows camera will. In particular large format belows cameras

They are 'special' however they are not expensive

Low budget DSLR costs £300? You can pick up a mid range 5x4 camera off ebay for £100! The film is expensive £15 for a 20 pack.

Still not as expensive as digital

Thomas James Hole

@paintbox: It was corny and played out on Flickr 4 years ago. I guess in internet time that makes it new again. And as has been pointed out, this lame-ass app doesn't even do it properly. It's more of a toy camera blurred borders effect.

At least the lenses have a legitimate use in correcting perspective.

corneliuscrab

@courtarro: i really like you masking technique. excellent result!