In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a miniature effect with tilt-shift. This effect will make your real life objects look miniature. Let’s get started.
1. Get Your Photo Ready
Select a photo that is preferably taken from a bird’s eye view or from a higher ground. For this tutorial I selected this photo with houses from Pexels.
2. Miniature Effect
Open your photo in Photoshop. Duplicate the background layer (CTRL + J). Go to Filter -> Blur -> Tilt Shift. Note: if you have turned your layer to an smart object the Tilt-Shift won’t be available (CS6).
Place the center pin to where you want the focus to be and adjust the amount of blur. You can bring in the blur by adjusting the lines. Once ready, hit OK at the top.
3. Finishing Touches
Next add Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and bring up the saturation. For the photo used in this tutorial, I set it to +15. I also added a Curve adjustment layer.
Lastly I’m going to add a Vignette (this is optional). Select the Gradient Fill and make the gradient black to black, making the right side black transparent, hit OK. On the Gradient Fill window, set the Style: Radial, Angle: 90, Scale: 159, and tick all the check boxes: Reverse, Dither, Align with layer. Hit OK and lower the opacity of this layer to around 29%.
That’s it your miniature image is ready!
