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There are special tilt-shift lenses available but for these pictures I used the «lens blur» filter in Photoshop.

Quick Mask Mode

Turn on the Quick Mask Mode and use the gradient tool to define the focal area.

Lens blur

Go back to normal mode and use the lens blur filter («Tiefenschärfe abmildern» in the german version).

Dynamic and saturation

Deselect your selection (opt. + D on a Mac or ctrl + D on a PC). In CS4 you can add the dynamic smart filter.

In CS3 you have to go to edit > adjust > hue /saturation and set the saturation of the master to something like +40.

You can also adjust the saturation of any color range on its own. I gues that’s something more advanced, but trial and error is the best way to learn.

If it doesn’t look enough like a toy scene you can add another smart filter: curves. And set the curve to a strait S.

Examples

Here are some more examples I created with this technique. I discovered that the tilt-shift technique works best for images shot from above and is most funny when people are involved.

Go check ‘em out on the interweb: www.lifeispain.ch

The set up

For this shot I used a dummy doll to get the focus right. I focused on the dummy with auto-focus and then turned to manual focus so the focus stayed as I set it. Then I replaced the dummy with myself trying to get my head in the same position as the dummy was before. It took me some time to find the right position for my head. After a few test shots I lit up a cigarette after pushing the automatic release.

The lightning

I also like the lightning in this shot. My face is lightened up by the lighter and the back of my head gets a nice outline thanx to a floor lamp right behind me.

The gear

I shot this image with my Canon EOS 400D and a nifty fifty (50 mm fix), ISO 1600, 1/80 and an aperture of f/2.0.

The correction

To get this result I desaturated all colors but the red color in Photoshop to -100. I desaturated the red color range to -80. After that I set the shadows in the «shadows/lights»-panel to 20%. Then I made an unsharp mask with a radius of 250 pixels and an amount of 15%. I duplicated the layer and desaturated the new layer. Set the blending mode to soft light and the opacity to 60%. I merged the two layers and set the contrast to 20. After all I made some color noise correction and that’s it.

Hope you like it.