Applying Dark Vignette Effect in Photoshop

A dark vignette effect could be used to give emphasize a certain area of a picture mainly for highlighting the central theme of the picture. It helps focus the viewer’s attention to the desired area. Let us see how to add a dark vignette to a picture using photoshop.

Open the Picture

Open the picture to which you would like to add the dark vignette effect. Either click File > Open or press Ctrl + O.

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool; either click on the icon shown in the picture or you can use the keyboard shortcut M. Once you select the tool click on the top left corner and while holding the button pressed, drag to curser to the bottom right corner of the image. This will create a selection of the center portion of the image excluding the 4 corners. Since our aim is to apply dark vignette to the corners we need to inverse the selection.

Either right click on the selection and click select inverse or use keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + I.

Add Mask

To add a mask either click on the button indicated in the picture or press Q.

The area appearing in red are the areas that are masked out and they won’t be affected by any of the changes we make.

Click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

One important thing to consider here is the transition from the dark area to the light ones. You could either choose a sharp transition or a softer one. The value you choose for the blur determines how the transition is made. Use a lower value for sharper transition and a higher value for smoother transition.

Press Q to exit the quick mask mode.

At this stage do not click anywhere on the picture. If you do so your selection and preferences will be lost.

Apply Dark Vignette Effect

Click Image > Adjustments > Levels or use keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Lto adjust levels to make our corners dark. Adjust the Output Levels slider to set your preferred level of darkness.

Press Ctrl + D to deselect.

Congratulations you have now successfully applied a dark vignette to your picture. Save the picture and you are good to go.

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