How to Make a Tilt Shift Effect in Paint.NET - как сделать Tilt-эффект в Paint.NET за 5 шагов.

How to Make a Tilt Shift Effect in Paint.NET?

Предлагаю вам статью одного автора на тему "Как сделать Tilt-эффект в Paint.NET за 5 шагов". Сейчас такие эффекты на фото очень полярны, это когда часть элементов становятся как бы игрушечными.

Все фото автора Ian Pullen.

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how you can apply a tilt shift effect to your photos using the free image editor, Paint.NET. The tilt shift effect has been popularised by many photo filter apps and it is also sometimes referred to as a miniature effect. If you've seen any photos of real life scenes that look as if they're photos of toy scenes, then you already know this technique.

This effect takes its name from tilt shift lenses, which are a special type of lens where the front element can be moved resulting in just a narrow band of the photo being in focus.

Traditionally, these lenses have been used for specialist reasons, such as photographing tool buildings without the vertical lines converging. However they're also commonly used for applying this miniaturisation effect.

The lenses themselves are relatively expensive, but thankfully it is quite an easy effect to replicate in an image editor like Paint.NET. To follow along with this tutorial, you'll need a copy of Paint.NET, and you'll also need to download and install the free Alpha Mask Import plugin, but I'll explain more about this in the first step.

Install the Alpha Mask Import Plugin.

First up, you need to download a free copy of the Alpha Mask Import plugin and install it.

Once you've downloaded the plugin, extract the file from the ZIP folder and copy the AlphaMask.dll to the Effects folder of your install of Paint.NET. The exact location of Paint.NET may vary on your computer, but on mine, I had to navigate to WINDOWS (C:) > Program Files > Paint.NET > Effects. If you have trouble finding the folder, you can click on the Start button of Windows and in the search box, type Paint.NET.

This should then display Paint.NET as the first result and you can right click on it and select Open location of this file. You will then have to open the Effects folder and place a copy of the AlphaMask.dll in there.

If Paint.NET is already open, you will have to close and relaunch it before you will see the plugin.

In the next step, we can now start work on creating our image.

Open and Duplicate Your Photo.

For the most effective tilt shift effect, you ideally want a photo that has been taken from an elevated position. I didn't have anything suitable so I downloaded a photo by kconnors from Morgufile.

Go to File > Open and navigate to the photo you're going to use and click the Open button. If the Layers palette isn't visible, go to Window > Layers to open it and then click the Duplicate layer button, the third button from the left in the bottom bar.

Now click on the upper most layer in the Layers palette to ensure that it's selected and then go to Effects > Blurs > Gaussian Blur. In the dialogue that opens, set the Radius slider to about 25 and click OK. You'll see that the image now appears quite blurred. Feel free to use a different setting for the radius slider if you think it looks better.

In the next step, we'll prepare a mask that we can use in the final step to apply the tilt shift effect.

Create the Mask.

This is a simple step to create a black and white gradient mask that will be used in the final step to apply the tilt shift effect.

In the Layers palette, click the Add New Layer button, the first button at the bottom left of the palette. Now click on the Gradient tool in the Tools palette and in the Options bar that appears above the work space, click on Linear (Reflected). The last step before drawing the gradient is to check that the Primary color is set to black and the Secondary color is white.

If the Colors palette isn't open, go to Window > Colors. If necessary, use the Primary / Secondary drop down to set the colors as required.

In the Layers palette, click on the empty upper most layer to ensure that it's selected. Now, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and left click on the page and drag directly upwards to produce a reflected gradient as shown in the image. Holding the Shift key constrains the gradient to specific angles, making it easier to produce a gradient that is absolutely vertical. The black part of the gradient will represent the area that will be in focus, so adjust the gradient if you need to change its positioning at all.

When you're happy with your gradient, go to File > Save As, change the Type drop down to PNG and then save the file, making a note of where you've saved it. During this saving process, your file will have been flattened, so ensure that before doing anything else, you go to Edit > Undo to recover all of your layers.

In the final step, we'll use this mask and the Alpha Mask Import plugin to complete the tilt shift effect.

Apply the Mask.

In this final step, the Alpha mask Import plugin will produce the effect of a miniaturised photo.

In the Layers palette, click on the check box in the uppermost layer to hide it and make the blurred layer visible. Click on the blurred layer in the layers palette to ensure that it's selected. Now go to Effects > Alpha Mask and in the dialogue that opens, click the Browse button and navigate to the gradient mask that you just saved and select it, before clicking the OK button.

You should now have a completed image with the distinctive shift tilt effect applied to it.