Even though Fireworks is a great web workhorse its still possible to create some nice photo manipulation effects similar to photoshop. In this article i’ll go through a simple way to approximate the “tilt shift” effect we see all over flickr and alike.

1. I’ve used a scene of a busy street with no particular focal point.

2. Create a copy of the original image so you have an image in two layers. Select the bottom most layer and apply a Gaussian blur filter, I’ve used a blur radius of around 3.1 but you can play around with this until you get the effect you would like.

3. Create a copy of unblurred image to use as the source for a vector mask. Create a square vector with a gradient fill, the same size as the image.  Now group the image and  gradient as vector mask,  Modify > Mask > Group as mask.

Once you have created the vector masked image it should look something like the image below. Make sure its the top most layer and apply an “overlay” filter with a alpha opacity of around 46.

4. Now we have a layer to define the general focus for the effect we need create a second vector mask to create a real contrast between the blurred area and focus areas. To do this copy the original vector mask layer and place it on the top of the layer stack,  apply a “lighten” filter and adjust the orientation and size of the gradient for best effect.

5. Now that we have our general effect in place we can apply a few live filters to maximise the effect of the tilt shift. Firstly lets group all layers together so all layers take the effect,  in this case we applied saturation and contrast to maximise the effect.

6. Final Image

I came across the ‘artwork’ of Nip/Tuck season 4. I don’t watch the show at all but the design I saw on a commercial caught my eye. You can also do this in Photoshop, but here’s how to glamorize your name or logo with a cool scenic background with Fireworks.

1. First find the a good landscape photo, preferably with the horizon across the middle. I found this in some free stock photography website.

2. Draw a rectangle with vertical linear gradient and set the colors #000099 on top and #ff9900 on the bottom.

Set that to overlay.

3. Next, draw two ellipses the approximate width of the image itself and a third of its height. Make the top one yellow and the bottom white. Set both to overlay.

This will generate somewhat of a sunrise effect.

4. Type your name! I use Free Sans, radial fill (white center grey edge), drop shadow (0 distance, 3 softness 98% opacity).

Voila! You have pretty artwork with your name on it. You don’t have to follow these exact specifications but you get the point. Optionally, you can put a dark rectangle gradient to make the top part of the sky darker. To see it, download the master file.

(This one is huge! 1.3MB)