(For reference only. What I am sharing here is not the ONLY way to edit your photos. Different photographer prefers different work flow)
Software needed: Adobe Photoshop CS3
Some portraits are nice with a soft vignette to draw attention to the subject in the center.
There are many causes for vignette. The common cause is what we called “optical vignette” which caused by the lens. Often, optical vignette is perceived as a “photographic defect” in many photographers’ eyes, but it is a subjective matter.
Alternatively, we can create vignette in photoshop. I will show you how in this tutorial.
Processing Workflow:
- Create Layer
- Set foreground colour
- Draw & set vignette area
This is the original image:
Step 1: Create Layer
Create a “Layer Via Copy”
Step 2: Set foreground colour
Make sure that the foreground colour is set to black (if you want white vignette, you can choose white. any colour, infact)
Press “Alt + Delete” to “paint” it with the foreground colour you selected. Don’t panic if you see your entire image is in BLACK (or in any colour you selected earlier).
Step 3: Draw & set vignette area
Goto the layer pallete on right, and click on the little “eye” on “Layer 1″ to make that particular layer invisible.
Now, goto the tool bar on left and select the “Rectangle Marquee Tool”.
From right to left, now goto the top and enter 250px in the “Feather’ field, this will soften the edge.
Now draw around the inner corners of your image.
Again, go back to the little “eye” box on the layer pallete and click on it to bring back “the eye”.
Once you bring back the eye, you image will turn into black colour (or the colour you selected) again.
Press “DELETE” to form the vignette.
You have just created the vignette…. BUT it might be a bit too strong.
So goto the Layer Pallete again, and adjust the Opacity slider on Layer 1. For this exercise, I used 75%.
Final step, goto LAYER>FLATTEN IMAGE to merge the layers into one.
The final image will look like this:
Before & After:
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7 users responded in this post
Hmm… doesn’t CS3 has a vignetting control under ‘Lens Correction’ ?
Hi LM,
It does. But I prefer to use this method to have a better control on how I want the vignette to be. It is a personal preference that I am sharing. Just like other methods in PS, this is NOT the ONLY way to do it. You may have your own preference too. As long as you are comfortable and think it is effective.
That’s the reason why I put a disclaimer in every Post Processing sharing I have in this blog: For reference only. What I am sharing here is not the ONLY way to edit your photos. Different photographer prefers different work flow.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
yes it does. And I actually like your method more than the one provided by CS3..
Glad that you like it.
Thank you for this- I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this all morning and it’s the only set of instructions that I’ve found that have explained the process clearly enough!
Photo Vignette effect…
I don’t know it is software tricks until I read Photoshop tutorial to create the effect with a few steps. I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS4 to create the effect. Here’s the step by step tutorial!
……
Photo Vignette effect…
I don’t know it is software tricks until I read Photoshop tutorial to create the effect with a few steps. I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS4 to create the effect. Here’s the step by step tutorial!
……
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