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[rayadagio]

I tried another effect. As a tribute to our dying traditional manifacturer of toy trains I call the procedure "maerklinizing". Everybody else would call it "fake tilt shift". What do you think about the result?
The image was taken at the main station of Antwerp in Belgium.

Best regards,
Bert

[phdemartin]

waouhhh very interesting use of fake deep of field to mimic lens limitation in Macro modes

[monoceros84]

The image was taken at the main station of Antwerp in Belgium.

Then this keyboard to the left hand site must be really giant...

Very nice effect. I guess it's not only some Gaussian Blur? Can you tell us what you did?

[phdemartin]

Yes PLEEEEAAAASS show us the "before" and way to the "after"

[rayadagio]

Of course I will tell you what I did. I'll report later in break or leisure-time.
Here's the image before.

@Mathias: You don't believe me? The objects that look like a keyboard on the left hand side are tracks on the second floor. 

Best regards,
Bert

[monoceros84]

@Mathias: You don't believe me? The objects that look like a keyboard on the left hand side are tracks on the second floor. 

Oopps, right. I can see it in the original file  But really looked like a keyboard in the blurry version I thought it was your home model railway. But then, as this is a real station, it looks awesome. Not the usual boring style...

[rayadagio]

Hehe, since it was my aim to cheat I'm very glad about your false assumption :-)

The procedure is quite simple:

1) Boost the contrast and pull the saturation to maximum to achieve a plastic-like look.

2) Scale down the image to reduce processing time for blurring.

3) Double the layer.

4) Apply blur to the top layer. Don't use Gaussian blur or motion blur! Apply focus blur to get a much more convincing imitation of depth of focus. Focus blur is an additional plug-in. You can download it there: http://registry.gimp.org/node/1444. Download for Windows users:  http://registry.gimp.org/node/8236. I set radius to 8 for this image (width=1000).

5) Add a layer mask to the top layer.

6) Use the gradient tool, set option to bi-linear gradient, drag mouse from about top quarter of the image down to about bottom third. The result is a horizontal black bar, feathering into top and bottom direction. The parts of the image that are couvered by black colour appear sharp.

7)For precision work I painted with black brush on the layer mask to get a sharp platform with the people and with white brush to get the background stronger blurred. - finished!

Look at this video to watch some amazing examples from sports photography:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/20070531_VINCENT_FEATURE/blocker.html

Also impressing:
http://www.cheapshooter.com/2007/08/24/tilt-shift-photography-its-a-small-world-after-all/
http://phlow.net/mag/web_design_technik/tiltshiftfotografie.php
http://foto-forum.foren-city.de/topic,2795,-fake-miniature-fake-tiltshift-tutorial.html


Another tip: You can modify the way of putting a gradient to the layer mask. For example you can use a circular gradient or put a selection to a certain area and apply a shaped gradient - if you intended to buy a Lensbaby you can now put your money aside for other nice things ;-)

Have fun – and show us your own results! :-)

Best regards,
Bert

[monoceros84]

Thanks. That sound really easy.
Unfortunately, I don't succeed installing the plugin. Can't install gimptool because it wants to have libgimp2.6.3 (I have the newest 2.6.5 installed). And when I try to compile it manually I get "configure: error: Could not find gdk-pixbuf-csource in your PATH".

How did you install it? Or do you use GIMP 2.6.3?

[rayadagio]

Hm, Gimp runs on my Windows machine at home. I definitely do not use the newest release. I assume it is 2.6.2. Installation of the plug-in worked without trouble.
Let's wait for feedback of other guys using Linux and the newest release of Gimp ...

[rayadagio]

BTW: 2.6.6 is out since a few days. Some further bugs are fixed. Perhaps this is an option.

[monoceros84]

BTW: 2.6.6 is out since a few days. Some further bugs are fixed. Perhaps this is an option.

Yep, I wrote it into the blog an hour ago. But up to now there are no built packages.

Anyway, the problem here doesn't seem to be that gimptool can't work with GIMP 2.6.5 but rather that it doesn't recognize libgimp2.6.5 as the library to use Don't think this will be fixed with libgimp2.6.6...

[phdemartin]

It compile well on Gimp 2.6.6-25.1 on my OpenSuse 11.1 , I just added the gimp-devel package and it was ok
./configure
make
sudo make install

that all

[rayadagio]

I think the sharpness of the blueish walls in foreground was contradictory to the sharpness in background. I addes some blur to the left and right side of the image.

[rayadagio]

What a very, very charming image, Philippe! :-)

[phdemartin]

It wasn't mine, I took it out of one off those power point sideshow I recive from my father.
Hope there in no copyright problem