Ever wanted to turn the world into a miniature model? Well, the good news is that you don’t need to ascend to godhood nor do you need an expensive tilt-shift lens, DSLR/SLR, or to climb up to the rooftop to get a shot of the great scene. All you need is a drone and a few minutes to edit the photo.

So how to make a micro world out of your aerial photos? Essentially, all you need to do is to find a suitable scene (e.g., downtown), take some shots, and create the micro-world visual effect by increasing the saturation as well as adding tilt-shift effects during the post-production.

Get an ideal shot

When you find the perfect scene, fly your drone to a suitable altitude (it does not need to be too high above it), tilt the camera down (around 45 °) to take a high-angle shot. Make sure you get enough depth-of-field in your photo.

Post-production

Now that your shot is done. Let’s move to the next step, editing it in Photoshop. You can also use the Snapseed or Lightroom apps on your smartphone to finish the post-production.

Open Photoshop and import your photo.

Crop the image and adjust the composition if the theme/main subject of your shot needs to be further highlighted.

Go to Filter –Blur Gallery- Tilt Shift to edit your photo.

Play around with saturation, contrast, and blur until you’re satisfied with your micro world.