Creating Vignettes in Photoshop

in Adobe® Photoshop®

A vignette is a soft-edged border around a photograph, a framing element where the image fades out towards the edges of the photo. A well done vignette can help to draw the viewer’s eye towards the area of the image that has been framed, bringing emphasis to that part of the photo. This technique works really well for wedding photos or baby photos or in any situation where you’re looking for a dreamy look. It also works really well when you have an image of a person, but the background is distracting. You can use this technique to fade out the distracting part of the photo and bring the focus onto the person. I think you’ll see that a vignette can really add a special touch to your digital scrapbook page.

Here’s the vignette I’ll be creating in this tutorial:

I’m going to show you how to create a vignette effect in Photoshop Elements. I’ll be using Full Edit mode of Photoshop Elements here, but the same steps can be used in regular Photoshop.

The technique I’ll be using in this tutorial is non-destructive. What I mean by that it is that I’m going to create the effect in such a way that the original image is preserved. This method leaves the unaltered image on a separate layer so that I could get back to it just by deleting or hiding the extra layers.

So, let’s get started on our vignette.

The photo has already been opened in the workspace.

You’ll notice that when you open your photo in Photoshop, there will be one layer in the Layers Palette. This layer is called ‘Background’ and there will be a little lock symbol next to it:

The Background layer is a special type of layer in Photoshop. There are several restrictions on Background layers. Background layers can’t be deleted, and you can’t delete any part of them. And, most importantly for what we’re doing here, Background layers must always remain at the bottom of the layer stack in the Layers Palette. So, that means that you can’t add in a layer below the background layer.

But, for what I’m doing here, I need to add in a layer below the picture.

So, what I need to do is convert this Background layer to a regular layer. That’s easy to do. All I have to do is double click on this background layer. This will bring up the New Layer dialog box:

Click ‘OK’ here. After that, the Background layer is gone from the Layers Palette and instead, there is a single layer called ‘Layer 0′:

I’ve just converted the background layer to a normal layer with the name ‘Layer 0′. Now, all the restrictions of the background layer are gone.

Now, I’m going to create the outline of our vignette, using the elliptical marquee tool. Select the elliptical marquee tool from the toolbox:

Now, put a selection around the subject of the photo. Click and drag out this selection. If I need to reposition the selection, I can press the spacebar while the mouse button is still pressed and reposition the selection outline, then release the spacebar and continue resizing the outline until I get it the way I want it:

Now, with the selection still active, I’ll hold down the Ctrl button on the keyboard, and then click on the new layer button at the bottom left of the Layers Palette:

This will add a new layer below the layer of the photo.

Now, fill in the selection outline on the new layer with black by choosing Edit>Fill Selection:

Then choose black in the drop down menu of the Fill Layer dialog box:

Click ‘OK’.

Deselect the selection by using Ctrl+D.

Now, hide the photo layer by clicking on its Layer Visibility icon (the eyeball) on the left of the layer in the Layers Palette:

With the photo layer hidden, I can see that I now have a layer with an elliptical shape filled in black:

To create the soft edge effect of the vignette, I will apply a Gaussian Blur to this ellipse shape. With the ellipse layer still selected, choose Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur:

In the Gaussian Blur dialog box, adjust the amount of the Gaussian Blur until it looks good. I usually use around 15 to 45 pixels, but it really depends on the resolution and size of the photo you’re working with. Here, I’m going to use 25 pixels for this photo.

Now, I’ll turn the visibility of the photo layer back on. Now, group the two layers together. This is sometimes called a clipping mask. To do this, hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and hover the mouse over the line between the two layers in the Layers Palette. I’ll click the mouse button when I see the cursor turn into two intertwined circles:

In a clipping mask, the bottom layer acts as a mask for the top one. This means that now the only parts of the photo that are visible are the places where there’s something on the ellipse layer. This is what my photo looks like with the clipping mask applied:

Now, all that’s left to finish the vignette is to give it some background color.

With the ellipse layer selected, hold down the Ctrl button on the keyboard, and then click on the new layer button at the bottom left of the Layers Palette:

This adds another new layer below our other layers:

Fill this new layer with the color you want to use for your vignette. I’m going to use a blue from my photo for this.

With the newest layer selected, choose Edit>Fill Layer:

Choose ‘Color’ from the drop down box in the Fill Layer dialog box:

When the Choose a color dialog box comes up, use the eyedropper tool to pick a color from the photo:

And, click ‘OK’. Click ‘OK’ again.

The finished photo: