Post 6 Filter Effects. Blur

I have to say, this course is getting more and more fun each week. For this assignment, I'm to take an image with some perspective and apply a blur effect to make the image look like it's a macroscopic image of miniatures. I had some technical issues with Photoshop with this one, I'm afraid, and had to uninstall and reinstall PS in order to complete the assignment. It seems that every time I tried to apply a tilt-shift blur to the image I was working on, Photoshop would lock up, forcing me to have to stop it in Task Manager and restart it. Updating PS didn't help, but the uninstall/reinstall helped just enough for me to be able to get things done (though it still freezes from time to time). Anyway, I've got 4 images to show here: 2 using tilt-shift, and 2 using an iris blur (which I think gives a more realistic effect). So without further ado, here is this week's offering:

This is my first attempt at using tilt-shift blur, and while it looks ok, I think that it lacks a certain realism, so I tried a different approach.

This one uses an iris blur, instead. I think it looks a little better, so far as realism is concerned (though I think a tiny bit more blurring would probably have worked, as well).

A different image here, but using the same blur effects. The lack of realism in this one is more pronounced than with the first image.

The iris blur effect here shows a great deal of improvement over tilt-shift blurring, and provides a certain amount of emphasis in the image with the focus on the red car in the center.