Add focus, fake miniature scenes, and straighten and crop wonky photos

What You'll Need:

>> OS X 10.6
>> Focus ($14.99 in the Mac App Store)
>> 15 Minutes

Difficulty: Easy

One of the criticisms of iOS apps is that rather than a lot of developers creating big apps for a wide range of tasks, you get much smaller products that only really do one thing. However, for us, that’s more of an advantage than a negative, because a small app typically provides a degree of focus and makes features accessible to more people. This is definitely the case when it comes to photography: it’s far easier for someone to prod the screen a couple of times to make a quick change to an image than be flung headlong into the Photoshops of this world.

BEFORE: Got a sprawling city scene with details such as cars and trees included?

AFTER: Transform it into a miniature scene in just a few simple steps.

In a sense, the Mac App Store has brought this kind of simple, honed app to anyone with a Mac, and we’re hugely enjoying the high quality, affordable and genuinely useful apps that are available for messing around with photographs. Focus is our latest love, a stylish app that enables you to add depth to your photos by applying blur effects. Also, in a nod to iOS (and Apple’s "Back to the Mac" thinking with OS X Lion), Focus has excellent gesture support.

As you’ll see in the walkthrough, one of the major benefits of Focus is that it gives you a head start through pre-defined effects, each intended for use with specific types of photos: portraits, horizontally oriented landscapes ("Nature"), vertically oriented cityscapes and buildings ("Architecture"), and close-ups ("Macro"). Additionally, there’s a tilt-and-shift effect, which provides the means for creating a highly stylized photo that makes the subject matter resemble a miniature scene. It’s also possible to tweak effects settings, so you end up with something unique.

Focus was created by Coppertino and is available from the Mac App Store, priced $14.99.

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How to Add Depth to Your Photos with Focus

• View the full image

  Fix a Photo and Add Depth: Straighten Image

  In this example, our image is wonky. If you have a photo with similar problems, click Place. Drag the Horizon slider to straighten the image. The guides within the frame should help you line things up. To restart, click Reset.

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  Fix a Photo and Add Depth: Crop Photo

  There are two ways to crop. To zoom within the frame, drag the Crop slider. If you zoom too much, the image’s quality at the same dimensions will suffer. To change the image’s proportions, use the Aspect Ratio menu.

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  Fix a Photo and Add Depth: Add Depth

  Select an effect to continue. Since this image is horizontally oriented, we’ve clicked Nature. The effect blurs the foreground along the horizontal axis, focusing the bulk of the building but blurring the garden and roof.

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  Create a Faked Miniature Scene: Choose an Image

  To get good results when creating a faked miniature, you need a certain type of image. It should be balanced, with plenty of depth and distance. City shots can work well, as can photos of motorways or landscapes.

• View the full image

  Create a Faked Miniature Scene: Select a Filter

  Click Tilt & Shift, move your cursor over the image, and drag the controller’s focal point where you’d like the focus to be. If you like, use the drag handle to align the effect with a strong angle within the image.

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  Create a Faked Miniature Scene: Add Contrast

  Models tend to have brighter colors than their real-life counterparts. To boost the saturation of the colors within your photo, drag the Vividness slider to the right. To compare your changes, tap the space bar.

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  Add Some Focus

  Blur effects are often used in portraits to de-emphasize background. We can focus more on the woman in the foreground by clicking Portrait. To adjust the position and strength, drag the circle’s center and edges, respectively.

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  Export an Image

  When done editing, click Export. Options exist to send images to iPhoto and email, but you can also save your settings to re-edit later. To do so, select Save Photo As… and choose Focus Document from the Format menu.

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  Quick Tip

  As noted in this tutorial’s introduction, Focus supports gestures for use on a trackpad. To see the full range, go to Help > Gestures Guide. Generally, though, trackpad users can perform rotations with the standard rotate gesture, and resize effects controllers by using pinch and unpinch gestures.

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