My Vignetting Method
If you've spent much time over at my Flickr stream, you've probably noticed that a lot of my pictures have some degree of vignetting applied. At the request of a friend (sorry I missed your call, Jim), I threw together a quick little tutorial that details how I apply "Maury's Vignetting" (that sounds like a salad dressing, doesn't it?).
To begin with, you need a source image — and in this write-up, I'll use a picture I took of a bunch of trailers:
You can download your own copy of this image by clicking here — just be warned that it's a 3000x1993, 1.4MB image.
Before we move on, let's hit on the picture dimensions and take a jab at Adobe all at the same time. A typical old stock 35mm film camera will vignette roughly 1/12th of the image, so — in a minute — I'll set my marquee to only cover 1/12 of the screen area. The problem? Adobe has the maximum marque feather set to a paltry 250 pixels, so if you do the math, that gives you a maximum pixel width (or height) of 3000 (250 x 12 = 3000). Boat-loads of Adobe users have been bugging them to increase this limit for years, so who know.
Point being, find your source image, and if you really want to get an authentic 35mm vignette, you need to scale it so the longest side is only 3000 pixels. If your image is smaller, just divide the longest side by 12, and that's your marquee feather amount.
Moving on...
1. Since my image is 3000 pixels wide, I'll set my feather to 250 like you see here:
2. Create a New Layer on top of the background image (Layer > New > Layer... or click the New Layer button in the Layers Palette):
3. Set the Foreground color to Black by pressing "D" on the keyboard:
4. Now use the Rectangular Marquee to drag-select the entire canvas — select all will not work here. In a short second, you'll see a selection area that has beveled corners, like this:
5. Now before you get fill happy, you have to invert the selection (command-shift-I or Select > Inverse). So far, all we've done is select the entire canvas with a 250 pixel feather border, so the interior of the image is the current selection. Since we only want to modify the perimeter, we need to invert the selection. When you do, you'll have this (notice the marquee selection all around the edges now):
6. Now we can fill the selection with the black foreground color. I use the keystroke option-Delete, but you can use shift-F5 (or Edit > Fill...), making sure it's set to fill in using the foreground color. Your image should now look like this (after you deselect the selection via command-D or Select > Deselect):
7. That looks somewhat decent as it is since the image has a lot of grey, but it mostly looks like you dropped some 250 pixel-feathered black over it — and we can do better than that!
The first thing I always try is to set this vignette layer to Overlay. I then duplicate it, and set the second copy opacity to 50%:
This results in the following:
At this point, play around with different opacities for that second vignette layer. I've gone as light at 10% on some images, and I've gone 100% for both layers — it just depends on the source image and how you want the picture to look.
Another layer blending mode I use sometimes is Soft Light. It impacts fewer dark pixels, so it can keep some dark images from getting too muddy. Again, just play around. You may find you don't want 2 vignette layers, and you may find that you only need 1 at 30%. Case in point, after doing some tinkering and writing the above, I now prefer 2 vignette layers, both set to Overlay, and both at 100% opacity. The change isn't as pronounced in these little images, but here's what it looks like now:
8. After a while, you'll get it where you want it, and I recommend not flattening the source image so that you can come back and tweak it later. When you export it to JPG or whatever, the layers will flatten themselves.
And there you have it: my method to getting an authentic old-stock 35mm vignette. If you want more vignette area, just drag-select a smaller portion of your source image. If you want less, decrease the feather amount — or don't scale your image by the 1/12 factor. If you don't want a rectangular vignette, just use the oval marquee, etc., etc.
Now, there are a load of things we can do to this pic to make it even more dramatic — but those are for another tutorial I'm working on right now. This next one will cover what I call "blasting" an image, and it touches on cross-processing, massive blending layer tweaks, massive layering tweaks, and this same vignetting technique.
Until then, here's a before and after shot of how the above simple steps can make a picture more dramatic:
To begin with, you need a source image — and in this write-up, I'll use a picture I took of a bunch of trailers:
You can download your own copy of this image by clicking here — just be warned that it's a 3000x1993, 1.4MB image.
Before we move on, let's hit on the picture dimensions and take a jab at Adobe all at the same time. A typical old stock 35mm film camera will vignette roughly 1/12th of the image, so — in a minute — I'll set my marquee to only cover 1/12 of the screen area. The problem? Adobe has the maximum marque feather set to a paltry 250 pixels, so if you do the math, that gives you a maximum pixel width (or height) of 3000 (250 x 12 = 3000). Boat-loads of Adobe users have been bugging them to increase this limit for years, so who know.
Point being, find your source image, and if you really want to get an authentic 35mm vignette, you need to scale it so the longest side is only 3000 pixels. If your image is smaller, just divide the longest side by 12, and that's your marquee feather amount.
Moving on...
1. Since my image is 3000 pixels wide, I'll set my feather to 250 like you see here:
2. Create a New Layer on top of the background image (Layer > New > Layer... or click the New Layer button in the Layers Palette):
3. Set the Foreground color to Black by pressing "D" on the keyboard:
4. Now use the Rectangular Marquee to drag-select the entire canvas — select all will not work here. In a short second, you'll see a selection area that has beveled corners, like this:
5. Now before you get fill happy, you have to invert the selection (command-shift-I or Select > Inverse). So far, all we've done is select the entire canvas with a 250 pixel feather border, so the interior of the image is the current selection. Since we only want to modify the perimeter, we need to invert the selection. When you do, you'll have this (notice the marquee selection all around the edges now):
6. Now we can fill the selection with the black foreground color. I use the keystroke option-Delete, but you can use shift-F5 (or Edit > Fill...), making sure it's set to fill in using the foreground color. Your image should now look like this (after you deselect the selection via command-D or Select > Deselect):
7. That looks somewhat decent as it is since the image has a lot of grey, but it mostly looks like you dropped some 250 pixel-feathered black over it — and we can do better than that!
The first thing I always try is to set this vignette layer to Overlay. I then duplicate it, and set the second copy opacity to 50%:
This results in the following:
At this point, play around with different opacities for that second vignette layer. I've gone as light at 10% on some images, and I've gone 100% for both layers — it just depends on the source image and how you want the picture to look.
Another layer blending mode I use sometimes is Soft Light. It impacts fewer dark pixels, so it can keep some dark images from getting too muddy. Again, just play around. You may find you don't want 2 vignette layers, and you may find that you only need 1 at 30%. Case in point, after doing some tinkering and writing the above, I now prefer 2 vignette layers, both set to Overlay, and both at 100% opacity. The change isn't as pronounced in these little images, but here's what it looks like now:
8. After a while, you'll get it where you want it, and I recommend not flattening the source image so that you can come back and tweak it later. When you export it to JPG or whatever, the layers will flatten themselves.
And there you have it: my method to getting an authentic old-stock 35mm vignette. If you want more vignette area, just drag-select a smaller portion of your source image. If you want less, decrease the feather amount — or don't scale your image by the 1/12 factor. If you don't want a rectangular vignette, just use the oval marquee, etc., etc.
Now, there are a load of things we can do to this pic to make it even more dramatic — but those are for another tutorial I'm working on right now. This next one will cover what I call "blasting" an image, and it touches on cross-processing, massive blending layer tweaks, massive layering tweaks, and this same vignetting technique.
Until then, here's a before and after shot of how the above simple steps can make a picture more dramatic:
2 Comments:
Gracias! This has become a favorite technique around my shop, as has the technique for proper balancing for black and white.
Very helpful... thanks!
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