How to use it
- Choose or drop a photo taken from above.
- Move Focus position to the part that should stay sharp, such as a street or a group of people (0 % is the top edge, 100 % the bottom).
- Set the Sharp band height and the Transition, the distance over which sharp turns into fully blurred.
- Raise Blur strength until the edges look out of focus.
- Add Extra colour for a toy-like look, then download.
How it works
For each row the tool works out its distance d from the focus line, as a share of the picture height. Inside half the band the row stays sharp. Beyond it, the blurred share rises in a straight line: (d − band / 2) / transition, up to 100 %. The row is then a mix of the original and the blurred picture in that ratio.
Extra colour pushes every pixel away from its own grey: grey L = 0.299 R + 0.587 G + 0.114 B, and each channel becomes L + (channel − L) × (1 + amount).
Example
A picture 101 rows high with focus at 50 %, band 20 % and transition 20 %: row 50 is sharp, row 60 is still sharp (d = 0.1, the edge of the band), row 70 is half blurred ((0.2 − 0.1) / 0.2 = 0.5), and row 100 is fully blurred.
With 50 % extra colour, a pixel (200, 100, 100) has grey 129.9 and becomes about (235, 85, 85).
Tips
- A narrow band (10–20 %) gives the strongest miniature illusion.
- Keep the transition soft (20–40 %); a hard edge between sharp and blurred gives the trick away.
- Use 20–40 % extra colour. Real tilt-shift photos often also look a little brighter, so you can raise the brightness afterwards with the auto enhance tool.