Samsung Tilt-Shift Effect: How to Make Miniature Photos

Galaxy doesn’t have a tilt-shift effect, also known as miniature mode, although you can get some impressive results with a little bit of editing. Here’s how to create tilt-shift photos on your Galaxy phone.

Unfortunately, there’s no tilt-shift mode on the Galaxy S25. Samsung lists Portrait, Pro, Food, Panorama, Hyperlapse and a bunch of other modes, but none of them will give you a section of blur running horizontally through your shot.

That said, you can still achieve convincing tilt-shift effects with some clever shooting and post-processing. In fact, getting good results all starts with how you take the photo.

What makes a photo look like a miniature

Whereas with a real tilt-shift lens the plane of focus is tilted, meaning that only a plane through the scene will be in focus, when emulating this effect the aim is to replicate the shallow depth of field that would be experienced when photographing models closely. Wikipedia’s article on miniature faking describes the usual recipe: a high camera angle, with the focus sharpest through the centre of the image and progressively blurrier towards the top and bottom of the frame.

The same article points out that increasing the colour saturation and introducing darker and harder shadows helps to replicate the look of brightly coloured models photographed under harsh lighting. It also notes the effect doesn’t always work as well for images with tall objects in them, which is probably why it seems to go particularly wrong so often for city shots!

What the Galaxy camera can and can't do

There are a couple of blur features on the Samsung camera, but for the most part they're not going to help in this case, and this table should save you some experimenting time! Here's a rundown of the options for a miniature effect photo.

Food mode is the closest thing we have to a native implementation of this feature. According to Samsung’s S26 user guide, it will let you take a photo with a frame overlaid, blurring everything outside of it. You can move the frame around or drag a corner to resize it. It’s designed for photographing a plate of food from relatively close up, so use this mode to get an idea of what you want and then recreate the effect properly in an image editor.

Shoot the scene for the effect

Follow the steps below to make sure you are capturing the best image possible before you even get to the blur effect, because no amount of editing can make up for shooting from the wrong location!

1. 1

   Get above the scene

   Position yourself on a terrace/platform overlooking a square/streets and point your phone down at an angle of 30-60° (the angle at which you’d photograph an object placed on a table).

2. 2

   Pick the lens

   Try to shoot when there’s plenty of traffic/action. Try the 1x (main) or 2x or 3x (zoomed in) camera. Avoid the ultrawide as its distortion may ruin the miniature effect.

3. 3

   Freeze the movement

   Use a fast shutter speed (to make sure moving people/cars are frozen because miniature figurines wouldn’t be motion blurred). Photo mode is generally good enough in daylight, but Pro mode should be set to 1/500s. Samsung notes that setting shutter speed will disable Auto ISO, and you must set ISO manually (usually ISO 50 to 100 in bright sunlight).

4. 4

   Choose hard light

   Shoot in sunny weather so shadows are short and dark.

5. 5

   Take several frames

   Check your photos and try again, as traffic/action on the ground changes every couple of seconds! By swiping the shutter button you can take a burst of pictures, increasing your chances of getting one with people and vehicles well-spaced. See our burst mode guide for instructions on how to enable swiping.

Add the blur in Snapseed

Lens Blur (which conveniently has a linear option) is one of Snapseed’s many editing tools. (As of Snapseed version 4.0 for Android, released in May 2026, the app’s options are organised into three tabs: Looks, Tools and Export.) You can download Snapseed for free. Our Snapseed guide covers the remainder of the app.

1. 1

   Open the photo and choose Lens Blur

   Open your best frame and tap on Tools and then Lens Blur (which is located under the “All” group if you can’t find it).

2. 2

   Switch to the linear shape

   Select the focus toggle icon and change from ellipse focus to linear focus. The linear focus will display a linearly sharp area running across the image.

3. 3

   Place and size the band

   Pinch to make it narrower and drag the band over a street or square you want to be sharp, rotating to conform to the street. A narrower band makes things appear smaller.

4. 4

   Set the blur

   Use a vertical swipe to navigate between options and a horizontal swipe to adjust their values. Increase Blur Strength to blur the edges of the image. Increasing Transition makes the blur effect less abrupt, so try keeping this value relatively low. If the corners of your photo appear a little too bright, you can darken them further by increasing Vignette Strength.

5. 5

   Add colour and contrast

   Painted models generally appear brighter than their real-world counterparts, so increasing the Saturation and Contrast in Tune Image will help improve the illusion. Don’t go overboard with these adjustments; just nudge them up a bit.

6. 6

   Export

   Save a copy, go to full screen and compare your photo with the saved version. If it looks life-size, then the problem is likely in how the picture was taken.

Fixing a miniature that looks life-size

• Try to shoot from as high a floor as possible.
• Use a fast shutter speed (1/500s or faster).
• Make sure the sharp band is aligned along the street (not the buildings). Alternatively, make sure that buildings are either completely within the band or outside it.
• Make sure the sharp band is narrow enough.
• Cars and people should be relatively small in the picture, so try zooming out a bit or moving away from the scene.

This trick isn’t the only application for high-angle shots, however. See our perspective guide for a closer look at shooting down on a scene. You can find information about other editing apps, including what’s included with Lightroom’s free and Premium plans, in our Android photo editing apps roundup.