Poor Man's "Tilt / Shift" Effect...

[Jay Beckman]

Started playing around in Lightroom and discovered that the liberal application of the "Skin Smoothing" controls applied via a Gradient (as opposed to the Brush Tool) can actually take the edges of an image pretty far out of focus...

Push it far enough and you can take this


And turn it into this

(Note the blur in the upper left-hand corner and lower right-hand corner and how it diminishes toward the middle...)

[F-16_fixer]

I've never tried to do this effect in Lightroom but now that you've mentioned it I will.  I always do this in Photoshop with a quick layer mask and the gradient selection and apply lens blur to taste.