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I’ve been looking at the Lensbaby Muse lately, thinking I’d like to try some tilt-shift photography. While searching I noticed there were many posts on how to “fake” a tilt-shift image in Photoshop. Since I use GIMP to post-process all of my photos I naturally adjusted my query and came up with several tutorials.


Saylorville Outlet Original


The above, rather bland image was taken at the Saylorville Dam, just north of Des Moines, IA. I used this fake tilt shift method to produce the following two images:


Saylorville Outlet Tilt Shift One

Saylorville Outlet Tilt Shift Two


I also found a second method which is more complicated, but it appears to give more control over the focus and a bit more creative leeway. With this method, I suspect you can push the bounds of what is possible even with an actual tilt shift lens. I need to test it out some time soon, I guess!