Vignetting: The Tutorial

[Japaslavian]

I just wrote something about this in the critique forum and felt compelled to share this with you guys.
I've seen a lot of ways to add in a vignette to a photo, and many of them look fake, overdone, etc. After playing around over the last few months I gradually discovered a way to make a relatively legitimate looking vignette in Photoshop that I tend to use quite often now.

This is generally one of the last steps I'll do when working on a photo besides sharpening.

So here is an image I shot in Spain not too long ago that I wanted to add a vignette to:



So what I did was duplicate my layer by pressing Ctrl+J (command+J on a Mac) and change the new layer's blending mode to Multiply. The blending mode is found on the top of the layer's palette as shown here:



Once you have done this, your image will appear significantly darker then before. What you are going to do now is use the Marquee Tool (M) and you are going to make a selection that is almost the entire size of the image. Leave very little space between the edge of the image, and the edge of your marquee. If you want it to be very even, you can Ctrl+click the top layer to select the entire image, then do Select>Modify>Contract and choose maybe 10-15 pixels depending on your image resolution.

Then you are going to need to feather this selection. This is done by clicking Select>Feather. My image was about 2300x2300 pixels so I went ahead and feather it by 250 pixels which is the max. If you are working on a smaller image, you may have to adjust this to a lower number.
Then just press delete to delete the feathered selection and you should have a nice, natural looking vignette. I generally adjust the opacity of the vignette layer to around 50% so it isn't so obvious, but some images will allow it to stay. If you want an even darker vignette, duplicate your vignette layerand adjust the opacity if you need to. It's all preference.

What makes this vignette technique better then the others I've seen is that you are not vignetting with just a color, but your actual image, so you will not lose any details, and you will not get those soft edges other vignettes seemed to cause.

Here was the result for my image:



This is a little darker then the one I kept, but it is just to show the effect.

Hopefully some of you will enjoy this short little technique. I think it is pretty effective and believable.

[peeperita]

i saw your post about vignettes on another thread and was excited to see this demonstration.....i like your approach especially as it pertains to retaining the details....

thanks for the tutorial.....and the image is lovely to boot.....i always admire your work...

peeper

[Jae]

Thanks for this. I've been experimenting to find the right vignette and I'm going to try this out next!!

[Lakitu]

Great stuff. I tried it with Gimp and it works well. Thanks for the easy to follow tutorial.

[JodyGall]

Oh my gosh! I just tried this on a picture and it worked great! I love it! Thank you so much for sharing! I'm off to post in Before and After so you can see! Woohooo!!

[starrylaurie]

I really like this effect. I'm going to have to try it.

(Well written, too!)

[Daisie]

Nice tutorial. Thanks.

[windrider86]

It is a wonderful new way to try out vignetting.

[imagesbyjk]

Another way is to use a curves layer instead of duplicating the background. Duplicating the background doubles the size of your file and can slow things down. You can change the blend mode on a curves layer and not add size to your file. PLUS you can further tweak the effect by dragging the curves black point down. And I just apply a layer mask filled with black and then paint with white where I want the vignette to be.

[candleman]

could someone define what a viganette actually is.. ?
is it the darker edges.. is it the higher contrast.. ??

(thanks for taking the time to put this thread together)

I normally use overlay as it boosts saturation too.. and to get the darker edges i use the burn/brush tool... sometimes just a gradient..