Too monotonous - brighten colors?

[kencaleno]

- To Vignette portrait images

Create an ellipse/rectangle around subject, using elliptical/rectangular Marquee tool
Select> Inverse
Feather radius 250 pixels
Edit> Cut


regards,Ken

[superdewa]

Originally Posted by Blue_Eyed_Demon

Which Photoshop application would you suggest for the vignette? And you mean over the entire picture? I did change it to a sepia color and it came out better, but I'm willing to try this too.

Here's a rough example of what I am talking about:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...eat=directlink -- I will delete that in few days.

I made it subtle, but it's still a little obvious in the upper left-hand corner -- I'd fix that if I were doing it for real. I think, even with the subtlety, it draws the eye more to the subject (and I confess I saturated her face just the slightest bit).

Ken's is one way of doing it, but this is how I did it (this gave me more control at the end):

- create a new blank layer
- fill layer with white (in PSE "fill layer" is under edit)
- lighten layer just so you can see what's under it
- make a roomy selection around the subject (either with the rectangle or the lasso)
- feather the selection (how much depends on the resolution of your photo)
- backspace to remove your selection
- play with the opacity until it's where you like it
- then use a soft eraser with a light touch to erase over spots you want to make sure don't get affected by the white, like her face. I did her whole body, and the bottom left corner, and also did a little erasing up he whole left side (leaving it just slightly lighter at the top left)

[Blue_Eyed_Demon]

It does look better!
Thanks Ken and Superdewa!

[jiminyClickit]

Blue_Eyed_Demon,

Such a great image to work on, it seemed to call for some dramatic lighting that you might be able to reproduce for the camera, but certainly an edit worth trying. Mostly one layer of Dark over copy of Original, erased in areas you wish to keep light. Final vignette is subtle, just focussing all attention on that face.