Welcome to the first in a series of Post-Processing tutorials. I am going to be talking about vignetting and how to make a unique vignette for every photo. Before I begin I feel I should give a basic breakdown of what I am working with. I am going to be using a pc and I will be editing with Photoshop CS2. I am not sure if anyone working with CS1 or below will have all the functions that I am going to be using. I’m sorry if you don’t have them all and I’m really sorry if you are stuck with Photoshop Elements. I remember a time when I was there. It was hard, but it also helped me master the basics before moving up to full-blown photoshop.
A vignette (pronounced vin - yet) is technically defined as an optical loss of clarity around the edges of a photograph. In normal English, this is an effect where the inside edges of the photograph get darker. The above picture has a vignette applied. While subtle the overall effect a vignette can have on an image can be astounding. Now that you know what it is, and have seen an example lets get working on making our own vignette.
1.
Lets Start where every Photoshop tutorial starts. Open your image.
2.
Select the “Polygonal Lasso Tool” from the tools palette. (alternately you can press the “L” key)
3.
Begin tracing the outer edge of the photography roughly. (roughly might be the wrong word; Perhaps it is randomly. Just look at the picture above to see what I mean) To finish your shape and make a selection simply click on the same point you started on.
4.
Next you need to Select the “Magic Wand Tool.”(alternately you can press the “W” key)
5.
Right click on your image and select the option “Select Inverse.” This changes the selection from being a box with no outer edges to being the outer edges without a middle, which is exactly what we want.
6.
Now, without touching the image, click on the button for “Quick Mask Mode” near the bottom of the tools palette. This will show you what the selection you just made looks like.
7.
We need to blur this alot to make it more subtle. To Do this Select the Options Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur from the taskbar.
8.
Change the amount of blur to best suit your photograph and hit “Ok” when your done.
9.
Go over to the tools palette and change your selection back to standard mode.
10.
Now that we are done shaping the vignette, we need to fill in the selection we have made and blurred with an adjustment layer that will darken the image. To do this you need to select “Create new fill or adjustment layer > Curves ”
11.
Once the the curves adjustment window has popped up you need to make a the line arch down a little. You will notice that as you drag the line down the selection we have made will turn that part of the image darker. When you are satisfied with the result click “Ok”
12.
Congratulations you just made your first vignette. I suggest you play around. Tear this technique apart. Find a faster way to do it. You can’t make something new if you do the same thing everytime. Just don’t forget to have fun.
this looks pretty cool, but I dont seem to see the end result, as the last image is the same as the first :)
awesome to see that there’s some life again in this site, and i’m looking forward to seeing some high quality tutorials.