Vignette Effect

April 28

9 min. to read

Play and manipulate with effects and share your best photos with the world.

Photo vignetting is fast becoming one of the most widely accepted trend in photography. Besides its stunning effects, Photo vignetting boasts of vast application in photography.

The Trend

Some time ago, in the early days of photography, this so-called “hotspot effect” was created by the byproduct effect of cheaper camera whenever they failed to effectively shield unwanted light rays from gaining entry into the camera lens. Even nowadays, depending on certain focal length and aperture parameters, vignetting is easily achieved by means of superzoom lenses.

With the advent, creativity and vastness of photo editing software, there’s virtually no end to the possibilities that abound in photography. The internet abounds with a wide range of downloadable and cloud-based image editors, both free and paid, that offer various services.

Skylum’s photo editing software, the Creative Kit for Mac users, is an amazing package that’s been designed to provide every photo-loving individual, professionals and leisure users, the opportunity to make their photo-imaginations become digitally tangible. With the Creative Kit, there really isn’t a limitation to the photo creativity achievable by anyone. Vignette Effect Image1

Amazingly, the Pro versions of the Creative Kit apps, Tonality, Focus, and Intensify, feature great photo vignetting tools which can be used to accomplish stunning effects on your images. As with other Creative Kit apps, they function as standalone and can also be installed as plugins to host applications.

The host applications also known as plugin hosts are Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Apple Aperture. The Kit also runs as an extension within Photos for Mac. These apps synchronize perfectly with any of the above-mentioned host application.

How to Create Stunning Vignette Photo Effects

As earlier mentioned, three out of the six Creative Kit apps, Tonality, Focus, and Intensify, can be used to create unique vignette effects on your images. As with all Skylum’s products, these apps are highly intuitive and easy-to-use; efficiently serving the needs of both professionals and hobbyists. Let’s begin by looking at how to create fantastic vignette effects by deploying the vignette filters contained in these apps.

Tonality CK

Popularly known as the award-winning, intuitive and highly creative feature-rich black and white image editor, which runs exclusively on Mac, Tonality CK offers a whole lot more than what it’s generally known for. It features flexible vignette tools like Luminosity and the Place Center controls that provide users with incredible image control.

The “Adjust Panel”, situated on the right-hand side of the screen, includes a list of tools that provides you with several hundreds of options.

Deploying Tonality CK’s Vignette Filter

The Vignette tab is loaded with simplified but powerful tools primarily used for creating lightening or darkening vignette effects around the edges of an image, thus directing the viewer’s attention to a specific part of the frame. Most of these effects can be accomplished by simply moving the slider of each tool to the left or right as desired. The tools include:

Amount: Moving the slider right or left will lighten or darken the edges around the frame
Size: This is responsible for determining how into the image’s center the vignette effect should encroach
Roundness: It is used for defining the shape of the photo vignetting produced. The shape varies from round to rectangular
Feather: It is used to define the softness or otherwise of the vignette effect produced on the image. The feather controls the gradation effect from the edge, inwards.
Place Center: By clicking on this button, you can easily determine where you’d like the center point of the image to be.
Reset: Perhaps you’d like to remove all the image’s vignette effects previously created by you. The ‘Reset button’ tool helps you accomplish this in a single click

Vignette Effect Image2

Focus CK

The vignetting effect obtainable with Focus CK is slightly different from the usual. Unlike Tonality CK that’s got several adjustment sliders under the ‘Vignette option’ that helps to fine-tune the design until a desirable vignette effect is created, Focus CK employs a single vignette slider which you could use to enhance or create an image vignette.

Here’s how it works:

Having determined the areas you’d like to blur, contrast, highlight and saturate, and done so accordingly, the Vignette tool is used to adjust the luminosity areas relative to the affected blur radius. Vignette Effect Image3

Deploying Focus CK’s Vignette Filter

Focus Ck gives you tremendous and unimaginable control over your photos. While Tonality is perfect for vignetting ‘black and white’ images, Focus CK is great for colored images. Effortlessly add Vignette, Detail, Structure, Contrast and Micro Sharpness as well as Shadow-tone and mid-tonal ranges to your images. Just imagine vignetting a perfect photo!

Featuring ‘Amount’, ‘Size’, ‘Roundness’, ‘Feather’, ‘Place Center’ and ‘Reset’, the image vignetting tools and processes deployed when using Focus CK are very similar to that of the Tonality CK.

Irrespective of your preferred photo vignette or skill level, you can create terrific vignetting effects using any of these Creative Kit apps.

Launching Skylum’s CK Vignette Tools from a Plugin Host

Launching the Creative Kit app as a Plugin or extension is equally as easy. After you must have installed the plugin on any of your preferred Plugin hosts, Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, for example, the vignetting tools of the preferred plugin can then be easily launched by following very simple procedures.

Open the desired image you’d like to work upon in your Plugin host or host application. The Creative Kit plugins are accessed differently based on the Host Plugin.

Adobe Photoshop: Click to open ‘Filter’, select the ‘Skylum Creative Kit’. From the list of Skylum’s apps displayed, you can then select the app (plugin) you’d like to work with; Intensify CK for example.
Adobe Lightroom: Right-click on the image you’d like to work on. From the menu tool bar, choose ‘Photo’, then select ‘Edit In’. Select the Skylum’s app you’d like to work with. Then proceed.
Apple Aperture: Select the image. Click on ‘Photos’, then select the Skylum plugin of your choice
Photos for Mac: The procedure is similar. Choose the image, under the ‘Edit’ option, select the Skylum Extension you’d like to work with.