Altered Reality: Tilt Shift Effect

Another very nice effect to be found in the Guided Edit menu is called Tilt-Shift, so-called as it mimics the visual effect that you can produce using a tilt-shift lens or an antique view camera (inset below). Although these very specialised lenses are principally designed for correcting perspective distortion, they can also be used to shift the plane of focus, thus producing extreme depth of focus effects.

This is one of the easiest and fastest Guided Edit special effects. Hit the Add Tilt Shift button and there it is - a big shift in focus across the screen. If it is defocussed in the wrong direction, or is too much in one part of the frame, click the Modify Focus Area button then click-drag across the image to re-draw the shift effect. You might get it in one but if not, just repeat the click-drag action till it looks perfect.

It helps to pick an image where there's already a distinct depth to the frame -...