Video Tutorials
Fake a Tilt-Shift Lens in Photoshop Without Spending $2,000 on Glass
There’s a certain kind of photo that stops people mid-scroll. The city looks like a model train set. The crowd looks like a handful of tiny plastic people. Everything feels weirdly toy-like and satisfying. That’s the tilt-shift effect, and for years I assumed it required either an absurdly expensive specialty lens or some dark Photoshop sorcery I hadn’t been initiated into. Turns out it’s neither. It’s a gradient mask and a blur filter, and you can knock it out in under ten minutes once you know what you’re doing.