Aaron Hollman's Blog

Note: All work for this article was done using GIMP 2.6.6. on an Intel iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.7.

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As many of you who read this blog know, photography is a hobby of mine. While looking at photography sites to get ideas for pictures, I came across what’s known as tilt-shift photography. I’m not going to go into the specific details of it on the blog, but you can read about what it is here: Tilt-shift photography – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I like the way tilt-shift lenses can make real life pictures look miniature. There are ways to fake this effect in photoshop and with The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program), the free Photoshop-like program that can be downloaded from: GIMP – The GNU Image Manipulation Program

All of the tutorials I’ve found to fake this effect were written for Photoshop. I have found a way to do the same effect with GIMP. Without further ado, here is the how-to:

Before doing any of this with a photo, make sure you have a backup or copy of the original photo.

1. Open the picture you want to do this effect with in GIMP. (not all pictures work well)
2. Select the Quick Mask mode by pressing Shift-Q on your keyboard. (or by going to Select –> Toggle Quick Mask in the menu bar.) The screen should have put a red layer over your image.
3. Select the Blend tool from the Toolbox.  It will be the icon that fades from black to white.
4. Select your shape from the options that appear. Sometimes Linear works best if you want to keep the whole foreground (or background) in focus. Sometimes Radial works best if you want to focus on just one section of the image.
5. Go back to your picture.
6. Draw a line from where you want the focus to start, outward to where you want the blur to start. This will be a gradual transition when the blur is applied.
7. Change out of Quick Mask mode by pressing Shift-Q again. You will notice that parts of the image were selected from where you drew the line.
8. Go to Filter –> Blur –> Focus Blur in the menu bar.
9. The window that pops up gives you some options. I wish I could tell you exactly what to select here, but it is all dependent on you personal preference and the picture you are trying this effect on. I have found that 10 or 15 for the Diffusion Model and Radius works best for me.
10. Depending on the speed of your computer, this could take a few seconds to several minutes. Be patient, the results are worth it.
11. If you like the image, save it AS A DIFFERENT NAME. You don’t want to overwrite your original image. If you don’t, Control-Z a few times will get you back to your original image.

You can check out other Tilt-Shift fakes I’ve done on my photoblog:

Fake Tilt-Shift Experiment: Las Vegas « Blog Archive « Aaron’s Photoblog
Fake Tilt-Shift Experiment – Monument Valley, AZ « Blog Archive « Aaron’s Photoblog
Fake Tilt-Shift Experiment – Grand Canyon « Blog Archive « Aaron’s Photoblog

Don’t be afraid to experiment with the settings and try different things. There are so many different options to try. For example, pump up the color settings and contrast some to make the picture pop a little more.

Good luck and have fun!

aaron