Fake tilt-shift photo with gradient blur? [Fireworks]

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From: dhogue94 on 21 Jan 2008 13:56

I came across these simple tutorials for Photoshop that imitate tilt-shift
photography by using a gradient blur (the lens blur effect), masking, and
curves.

http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/photoshop-tutorial.php
http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065

Is there a way to create this same effect with Fireworks CS3? I've been
trying to play with masks, gradients, and blurs, and I just can't seem to get
anything remotely similar.

Thanks!

Dave

From: Jim Babbage .:CMX:. & .:Adobe Community Expert:. on 21 Jan 2008 14:58

From: Linda Rathgeber on 21 Jan 2008 15:39

dhogue94 wrote:
> I came across these simple tutorials for Photoshop that imitate tilt-shift
> photography by using a gradient blur (the lens blur effect), masking, and
> curves.
>
> http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/photoshop-tutorial.php
> http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065
>
> Is there a way to create this same effect with Fireworks CS3? I've been
> trying to play with masks, gradients, and blurs, and I just can't seem to get
> anything remotely similar.

Off the top pf my head, two ways:

-clone the image twice, so that you see a top clone, a middle clone, and
the original image in the layers panel.

-use the marquee tool set to feather 10 pixels to select the portion of
the image you want to remain sharp.

-once the selection is made, choose Select > Invert Selection, and then
Edit > Cut.

-apply a Gaussian blur (I used 2.00) to the middle clone

Alternatively, if you want to do it non destructively,

-clone the image twice and cover the clone with a rectangle

-fill the rectangle with a horizontal liner gradient of white - white -
black - black - white - white.

-select both the rectangle and the clone and choose Modify > Mask >
Group as mask.

-apply a blur to the middle clone.

-adjust the position of the colors in the masking gradient as necessary.

--
Linda Rathgeber [PVII] *Adobe Community Expert-Fireworks*
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Fireworks Newsgroup: news://forums.projectseven.com/fireworks/
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--------------------------------------------------------------

From: dhogue94 on 21 Jan 2008 17:42

Linda,

Thanks! I'll try this technique this evening and let you know how it works.

Dave

From: abeall on 21 Jan 2008 18:25

You can't get this effect in Fireworks with the same level of realism and
precision as Fireworks because of two main problems:
1) Fireworks has no blur type that creates lens blur type effects. Gaussian
blur creates a different type of blur that looks much smoother.
2) You can't create a gradual change of blur amount using a value ramp, like a
gradient, like the Lens Blur filter does in Photoshop. If you put a clone over
top and blur the clone, then mask/erase parts so the original shows through,
you'll notice the affect looks more like a haze or mist is over top of your
original image. This is because the blur doesn't gradually increase, there's
just semi-transparent blurred stuff over top.

Lens Blur is a filter I've wanted in Fireworks for awhile.

If you don't have Photoshop available to do a real Lens Blur, you can get a Fw
compatible plugin to do it:
http://www.dofpro.com/

Or you can try the workarounds suggest. Here is my take on the workaround
options (which I do use often):

1) As suggested, create a clone over top, blur the clone with Gaussian blur
live effect, then mask or erase parts of the clone so the original unblurred
bitmap shows through. As I said, this doesn't create convincing, gradual
changes in amount of blur, but it may be acceptable for what you want.

2) Do the same as above, but use several steps. In other words, create say 4
clones (so you have 4 identical bitmaps). In the layers panel, add increasing
amounts of blur on bitmaps... so for example the original has no blur, the one
below it has 1 radius gaussian blur, then next one below has 2 radius gaussian
blur, the next below has 3 radius gaussian blur, then last has 4 radius
gaussian blur. Then you mask out more and more on each bitmap, so the bottom
most-blurred one has no mask, the one above has a wide mask, the one above has
a less wide mask, the one above has an even less wide mask, and the final
original one has the smallest mask. Yeah, it's kinda crazy. :-)

3) The third option is to use the blur tool. The blur tool will let you get
more gradual blur changes, because you can simply scrub over areas longer to
slowly increase the amount of blur. The problem is that it's harder get precise
value changes from one area to another since you are doing it by hand. Also,
the blur tool has a tendency to darken the color for some reason.

Here's an example PNG, which uses all 3 techniques on different hidden layers:
http://fireworks.abeall.com/source/TiltShift.fw.png

Hope that helps.

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