articles/Lens/ctt-page4

Charlotte Takes a Tilt - part 4 of 1 2 3 4 5

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2014

Photoshop Comparison

Of course there's every reason to ask the question of why you would spend around £1,200 or more on a specialist lens when the latest version of Photoshop has a tilt-shift filter built in. So in the interest of deciding if I should really sell my lens or not I road tested the filter on a portrait shot - one of my favourite subjects to shoot with this lens.

The filter isn't complicated to use but it has several parameters that you can adjust. The basic premise is that you can change where the blur is applied and how strong the effect is. The tilt-shift filter presents you with a circle and a set of horizontal bars. The centre circle is where you want the focussed part of the shot and the bars indicate the boundaries of that focus before the blur is introduced. In addition, the blur radius can be changed too, effectively changing the strength of the blur on the outof-focus areas.

As you can see from the sample shot, the downside to the Photoshop filter is that it doesn't work in the same subtle and nuanced way that a genuine TS lens does. Photoshop doesn't have the intelligent ability to create the same kind of effect, although by all accounts Adobe After Effects can produce a more similar effect to a TS lens.

It may not be worth buying a lens capable of tilting the focal plane if you're only going to use it on the occasional wedding or portrait shoot because the Photoshop filter is convincing to an untrained eye. However, for those photographers looking to use it for more subtle imagery such as fine art nudes or on commercial images that will be under serious scrutiny, it might just be worth renting or buying in order to get the full effect.

• Charlotte Takes a Tilt page 1
  
• Charlotte Takes a Tilt page 2
  
• Charlotte Takes a Tilt page 3
  
• Charlotte Takes a Tilt page 4
  
• Charlotte Takes a Tilt page 5
  

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