Using lightroom to create tilt shift look

If you don’t quite have the budget yet for the amazing Canon TS-E 24mm lens don’t worry you can quickly get a tilt shift type effect using Lightroom in just a few minutes. First though if you need a little Tilt-Shift portrait inspiration check out this post:
Great photos using Tilt-Shift lenses for portraits

Creating a tilt shift look in Lightroom is actually easy. We can use the graduated filter to blur in the edges of the photo giving you that small focal plane that tilt shift lenses are known for. Just follow these few quick steps:

1) In the graduated filter tool in Lightroom set the Clarity and Sharpness to -100.
tilt shift lightroom setting

2) At the bottom drag a graduated filter from the bottom to near the center and remember to angle the filter just a little bit. Depending on how much you want to be in focus on the image adjust this filter to blue as much or little as needed.

tilt_shift_lightroom

3) Do the same thing at the top of the image to blur in the top. Presto, your done!
graduated filter for tilt shift

4) If you want to go a little further and get the miniaturized look just up your contrast a little (here I went up to +23 for contrast) and the saturation (+45 in the example).
lightroom_tiltshift

Really quick and easy using the Graduated Filter in Lightroom. You can also overlap another graduated filter if you want the blur to be even stronger. Try it out and let me know how it goes. You can always post a comment using our Facebook comment feature below or head over to our Facebook wall and share an image.

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