[Thinking about AI Illustrations] Tilting the plane of focus makes reality look like a miniature | Tilt-shift lens

A tilt-shift lens is a lens that allows you to tilt the plane of focus.

With a normal lens, the plane of focus is horizontal, but with a tilt-shift lens, you can tilt it. As a result, only a part of the image is in focus, while the top and bottom are blurred. This creates a miniature-like appearance.

🎨 What is tilt-shift?

It is a lens that allows you to freely tilt the plane of focus.

While it has been used in architectural photography to correct the distortion of buildings, you can create unique images by intentionally manipulating the focus.

In terms of prompts, writing "tilt-shift lens" or "miniature effect" will result in images with a texture close to this.

🎨 Reality looks like a miniature

The most interesting effect of tilt-shift is that real-world landscapes look like miniatures.

When you apply tilt-shift to a picture of a city viewed from a high place, the real cityscape looks like a toy diorama. This is because it resembles how focus is captured when taking close-up shots of miniatures.

When I first tried it, I thought, "Isn't it just blurred?" but when the choice of subject and the way it was blurred matched, a miniature feel suddenly emerged.

🎨 Things I tried

I tried drawing a "cityscape seen from a high place" using tilt-shift.

The result was an image where only a band in the center of the screen was in focus, with the top and bottom blurred.

The cityscape really looked like a diorama. The buildings looked like small toys, and it was an image that didn't feel like "this is a real city." However, I was trying to draw a dog, but before I knew it, I had changed it to a cityscape.

🎨 Translating to prompts

These are prompts for specifying tilt-shift.

tilt-shift lens, miniature effect, selective focus, blurred top and bottom

Writing "selective focus horizontal band" makes it easier to get focus only on a horizontal strip.

Adding "model-like" or "toy-like" further strengthens the miniature feel. It is easier to achieve the effect when combined with a bird's-eye view or a view from diagonally above.

🎨 How focus changes perception

What I realized while using tilt-shift is that the parts in focus look "real," while the blurred parts look "artificial."

When everything is in focus, it is perceived as reality. But when only a portion is in focus with the top and bottom blurred, the perception shifts to "a close-up of something small."

It felt strange that the same image could be perceived differently just by how the focus is applied.

Oh well, it's fine.

Afterword

Thank you for reading this far.

I learned about tilt-shift for the first time today, and it really makes for mysterious images, doesn't it?
Maybe it will broaden the scope of your ideas?

Please feel free to make use of it.

It would encourage me if you could "follow" or "like" this!
I look forward to your continued support!