Tiltshiftmaker turns photos into miniature scenes

Tilt-shift photography is a technique that requires a special lens to change both the perspective and focal field of an image. A similar effect can be created in PhotoShop and other high-end image editing programs, but it's a lengthy effort that casual photographers will probably find daunting. Web-based photo editor Tiltshiftmaker has automated most of this process, letting you achieve a similar effect right in your browser.

To do it yourself you can either upload a photo from your computer, or drop in the URL of one hosted online. From there you can adjust how much of the shot you want in focus. This is done by dragging a horizontal bar up and down the shot, the size of which can be increased or decreased to bring more of your picture into focus. There's also the option to blow out the saturation to make your shot look cartoonishly colorful.

The test shot I used of the street outside CNET's office turned out great (see it below), and only took a few seconds to put together. My only qualm is that the editor's preview, which needs to be refreshed between each edit to see changes, is a little bit small, making minute adjustments on larger photos a tad difficult.

I'd love to see this added in as an option in existing Web photo editing tools like Fotoflexer and Picnik.

(via DownloadSquad)

Tiltshiftmaker turns every day shots into tilt shift-esq photos. Click to see a much higher resolution version of this shot.

(Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

[Jelly Baby]

Tilt-Shift, The new HDR?

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Possibly, although a bad tilt shift doesn't look nearly as bad as a bad HDR. If anything people just think you had some vaseline on your lens.

[wfavero]

Thanks for the post. I found it very interesting. I now have a term for something we started doing to photographs about 3 years ago with PhotoShop (as you mentioned). I hope you don't mind a few samples of photos we "touched" for a display.

http://williefavero.com/sample_one.jpg

http://williefavero.com/sample_two.jpg

Going to give the web site in your post a try and now compare the results.

Thanks

Willie

[Jelly Baby]

I get the feeling we might all get a bit tired of "tilt-Shift" shots over the next few months - just like over processed HDR when programs like Photomatix made creating them so simple. At least HDR does have an application and if used with a bit of care can sometimes be the only way to record very high contrast scenes (but if it looks "HDR'd" then it's too much!)
Tilt-shift just looks a bit...... silly, to me anyway.

I wonder who the first person will be to refer to the "quality of the tilt-shift bokeh..."

;¬)

[lfreel]

Josh:
It seems to me this is backwards. Tilt shift lenses are mostly used to tilt the focal plane to bring near and far parts of the scene into focus for an increased depth of field. You don't need a software program to decrease depth of field (DOF) only to set the proper lens opening. These lenses are very expensive and no photographer would use one if only to provide a reduced DOF. Bluring software algorithms have been around for years and provide an already available source for doing this.