Vignettes add a professional and finished touch to any image and make your subject POP. Here are 5 of my favorite ways to vignette in Photoshop Elements. Each photo is different, and each of these methods will be the ideal treatment for one image or another.
- Easy – Go to the Filter Menu, select Correct Camera Distortion and move the Vignette Amount slider to the left until you achieve the desired effect.
- Flexible – Use the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tool to select the central portion of your photo and invert the selection (Shift+Control+I). Feather somewhere between 75 and 150 pixels. Copy this selection to a new layer and change the Blend Mode to Multiply.
- Traditional – Press D to set your colors to Default black and white. Make sure that black is the foreground color. Use the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tool to select widely around the focal point of your photo. Invert by typing Shift+Control+I. Feather between 75 and 150 pixels. Create a new layer and fill the selection with black by typing Alt+backspace.
- Variation – follow the steps in the previous method, but instead of black sample a color from your image or use a complimentary color to fill the vignette with.
- Brilliant - Rita from CoffeeShop Free Actions taught me this method! With your foreground color set to Black, add a Gradient Adjustment Layer (this isn't the same as Gradient Map, by the way). Double click on the Gradient box and select the Foreground to Transparent Gradient. Change the Style to Radial, Scale to 150% and make sure the Reverse and Align with Layer boxes are checked. Hit OK, and change the Blending Mode of this layer to Soft Light, Multiply or Overlay.
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Erin is a bookish SAHM, former Latin teacher and occasional CPA. She is Episcopalian, a yellow dog democrat and an addict of British royal history. She is trying to add photography to her repertoire due to a moral obligation to document for posterity the extreme cuteness of her husband and two daughters. Her blog, DigitalPhotographyForMoms.net, offers tips and short cuts to help other Moms (and everyone else) create great pictures of their kids.
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I love these hints. I just use an action, but I'm going to try your methods!
Thank you for sharing these great tips.
This is so cool! I need to really get more serious about photography! Thankyou so much for sharing!
I'm so glad you all like them! Let us know if they work for you!