Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Tilt-Pan Shifting of Digital Photos

Tilt-Pan Shifting is another trick to try with Digital photographs.

It basically blurs the image to make it look miniature - like a diorama!

Here's a cool shot someone did of Ninilchik, AK.

We usually use Paint Shop Pro, but Gimp is another free tool that makes it easy. Lets give it a shot!

Here is an original photo I took from a trip to Shanghai, China.

Photo's from a distance, looking down give the best effect.

Look at all them people!





Here is a quick first-try using PSPro. It only took about 3 minutes (and looks that way!).

First, I just deleted out the sky - to make it look fake.

Then I blurred various areas farther away ALOT. I repeatedly blurred subsequent areas less and less as I approached the area below the Pearl Tower I wanted to focus on.

Not bad for a first attempt.

Here's a nice photo of boats in Shuzhou, China.

Same process to follow.

Also, play around with adjusting the contrast and saturation of the colors, to give them a 'plastic' look.




The variety of blurring and focus gives some depth, and starts to make it all look miniature.

There are some great tutorials out there - once we catch some fish and get out again this spring we will be taking more photos with this tilt-pan in mind.