Free special effect for photos that will knock your socks off

Tired of using plain ol’ creative commons images or stock photos? There are a lot of ways to spice those pictures up to make them more blog or marketing collateral worthy, starting with Tilt Shift Maker, an online service that emulates miniaturization of models online.

So if you have a picture of a neighborhood or a local event that you are writing about, or you want to use a standard image of your city’s skyline, this is a great special effect to give it an model-esque feel (not model as in twiggy girls on a runway but like a 3d model of a building) or to isolate the focus of an image without using a lame 1990s fuzzy lens effect.

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See how all of the people in the “After” look like little mini model people? Let’s try it with a cityscape now…

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Lastly, let’s look at my favorite thing in the world (purely for illustration and not my own amusement, of course), kittens!

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So are your socks still on or did this new special effect knock ’em off?!