Four Ways to Create ANY Kind of Vignette in Photoshop

Learn how to draw more attention to your subjects with soft, natural vignettes in photoshop. Learn how to use Levels Adjustment Layers to brighten up the areas that matter most in a photo while darkening the corners and edges. Create the custom vignette of your choice JUST by using the very basic concepts of Layer Masks and its Properties. Create any kind of vignette in photoshop.

Hello everybody, my name is Charles. In today’s video, I’m gonna show you four ways to create any kind of vignette in Photoshop. So artistically, the idea with a vignette is that you darken the edges around the images to draw the viewer’s eye into the central part of the image. These four methods that I’m going to show you are gonna be easy and they’re gonna have different degrees of control that you have over the vignette. Create a vignette in photoshop.

Using Camera Raw to Create a Vignette in Photoshop

So let’s get started. In this example here, we’re gonna draw the viewer’s eye, of course, to the lady in the swimsuit. First, I’m going to make a duplicate of the background layer. Command + J and now I’m gonna make a smart object out of this duplicate layer. Right-click and say Convert to Smart Object. And we’re gonna come up here to the menu and say Filter, Camera Raw Filter. This is the new Camera Raw interface. So I’m going to slide down to where it says Effects. Near the top slider is the vignetting. You can move this to the left, you’ll get a darker vignette. Move it to the right, you’ll get a lighter, almost white vignette. Let’s move it to the left to make it a darker vignette. So you have your midpoint slider, which brings your vignette in and out. So if you want a close vignette like that or if you wanna move the vignette out to the edges, more like that. So feathering, as you can see, it makes your vignette a hard edge or a soft edge. You probably want your vignette a soft edge. Roundness changes the shape of the vignette. Want it more square or more round. And highlights, if you see up in the left-hand corner of this image, you see the highlights of the clouds coming in. Sometimes when you darken the edges with a vignette, you’ll affect some of the highlights in the image. And also here you have style up here, which you can change those to see how it affects your image. I like the highlight priority. So I’m going to come up here, take a little bit of this vignetting out. And if I hit Q, there is the before on the left and the after on the right. And I say okay. Here’s before, there’s the after. If I think it’s too much, I can either go back into Camera Raw and change it or I can drop the opacity of that layer. That is by far the easiest and quickest way to do a vignette. Create a vignette in photoshop.

Create an Inner and Outer Vignette In Photoshop

So if you want, you can have as many vignettes in one photo as you want. Like in this example here, I think what we’re going to do is we’re going to have a vignette on the outer edge, make that dark and then more in the middle where this road is, we’re going to emphasize that a little bit more within our vignette. I’m going to use the elliptical marquee tool up here. I’m gonna use it to draw my shape right here. If you hold down the space bar, while you still have the mouse down to draw, you can move your shape around like this. So I’m gonna move it and draw it. I’m gonna leave quite a bit of area around the outside for my vignette.

So now we need to darken the area. We have a few tools we could use. We can use the levels, the curves, or even the brightness, contrast adjustment layers to darken the outside of the vignette. I’m going to use the brightness and contrast adjustment layer. I’m gonna double click on the adjustment layer properties and I’m going to bring the brightness down, something like that.

And one thing to note here, I can still change the shape of my vignette area but if I want to change the shape, I can just hit Command + T and I can transform that shape any way I want, make it a little bit smaller. Something like that. Hit the check mark and now I want to invert this layer because I want the outside to be dark, so command + I. I need to feather the edges of this vignette though.

So if I double click on the properties and click on the mask, there is a feather slider right here. So I’m gonna bring this over, feather that out. So far, that is what it’s darkening. So again, with the brightness, contrast adjustment layer, if I click on the properties right here, that’s gonna give me access to the brightness of my vignette. And if I click on the layer mask itself, it puts me to the properties of where I can feather it more.

So something you’re gonna notice when you create your vignette, in the areas that you darken, especially in a photo like this, you’re gonna lose some of the highlights, like up here at the top, there’s some highlights that I might wanna bring back. And in order to bring some of those highlights back, I’m going to double click on my layer and we’re gonna come down to the underlying layer sliders on Blend If, and we’re going to come over here to the right slider, which is our highlights. We’re gonna protect our highlights.

As you can see there, coming back and I’m gonna hold Alt or Option and I am gonna split this indicator. So there’s a smooth transition there and say OK. There’s before and there’s the after. So see what I’ve done is even though I’ve darkened it, I’ve brought back some of those highlights. I just wanted the darkening effect to be in the shadows more. Not in the highlights.

So again, there’s before and there’s after. What you can also use a vignette for is to actually lighten up an area. We’re gonna do that coming down the middle of this road here. This will be our inner vignette. So this time, I’m gonna get my marquee tool but I’m gonna get my rectangular marquee tool. And I’m going to make a small rectangle down here. I’m going to create another adjustment layer, another brightness contrast adjustment layer and I’m gonna bring up the brightness, oh, to say 100.

Now we need to feather this selection. So double click, click on the layer mask. Here’s our feather, nice and feathered and now we’re gonna do something similar to what we did with the outer vignette. Gonna double click to bring up the Layers dialog and we’re gonna come down here to the underlying layer of Blend If, and this time, we’re gonna bring over the left slider. Hold Alt or Option and split this indicator right here. And here, we’re protecting the darker tones. We don’t want that bright, inner vignette to affect the darker tones. Say OK. There’s the before, there’s the after. You zoom in a little bit. There’s the before. There’s the after.

But any time I think this inner vignette is too bright, I can click on the properties and adjust the brightness down or I can come up here and change the opacity of this adjustment layer. I’m gonna group both these together. Shift + click and hit Command + G and there is the before and there’s the after. So here now our vignette gives us a little bit more focus on the center of this image. Hey, if you’re getting value out of this so far, hit that like button. So in this example here, we’re gonna use the gradient adjustment layer.

Using the Gradient Fill Adjustment Layer to Create a Vignette in Photoshop

So I’m gonna come down here and get the gradient adjustment layer. So this is our Gradient Fill properties. You click on Gradient. You wanna make sure there we choose the gradient, the one that goes from black to white and say OK. We wanna make sure that this is a radial gradient. Click on reverse. So now we can see that the inner part is light, the outer part of the gradient is dark. And you can play with the angle here to bring that gradient in and out as you wish and that looks pretty good. It’s kind of feathered too. Say OK.

Now, you wanna change the blend mode of that gradient fill adjustment layer to something like soft light. There’s how it looks before, there’s after. You can change some of this opacity. There’s before, there’s after. I can also bring back some of those highlights if we want. Double click on the gradient fill layer to bring up the Layers dials. Come down here to the underlying layer. Blend If, and let’s bring over the right slider. Hit Alt or Option and split those and get kind of a effect that we’re helping out those highlights. We don’t wanna get rid of them completely. Before and there’s the after.

And if we wanted, we could make her stand out even more. I click on the layer mask. Bring up my brush and with a soft, round brush. Then put my flow at about 50, paint with black over areas of her body. It might look better. It’s a little bit more darker. Remove some of that haze that was introduced by the vignette and the changing of the blend mode. So there is the before and the after. Create a vignette in photoshop.

Using the Levels Adjustment Layer to Create a Vignette in Photoshop

So for this method, we’re going to use the levels adjustment layer. And I’m gonna use the output slider on the right here. I’m gonna bring it over to the left to make everything dark. I’m going to get my brush, B for the brush tool. Make sure my opacity and flow is at 100%. Make it a hard, round brush. Use my brackets to make it a bigger brush. Click and dab and now I wanna change that shape. If I hit Command + T for the transform tool and hold Shift and Alt and I can scale this from the center. I can also reshape this. Pulling these handles here. Angle it a little bit like that. Say OK. I’m gonna double click on the levels mask to bring up the properties and feather this. But when I change the shape of this more, I can say Command + T and pull this handle out like that. Click on the mask. V for the move tool and I can reposition this vignette. There’s the before, there’s the after. Create a vignette in photoshop.

See my photography website here 👉 https://www.charlescabreraphotography.com

See the previous blog article here 👉 https://charlescabrera.com/dodge-and-burn-skin-retouching-in-photoshop/