Draw Attention With The Vignette Effect

A classic effect used by photographers for many years is the vignette effect. That is to use a vignette of focus or vignette of light to draw attention to the subject of the photograph. For external home photos the vignette of light technique frequently works well. The way this works is that the viewer’s eye is attracted to light areas in the image. So if you subtly darken the outer edges of an image and make the subject of the image lighter the image the viewer’s attention is naturally drawn to the subject of the image. I used this technique on the image above.

Here’s how to create a vignette of light with Photoshop or Elements. After you’ve corrected and sharpened your photo create a levels adjustment layer that makes the photo slightly darker. Then with a soft, fairly large brush erase the area of the adjustment layer you want to draw attention to. Where the adjustment layer is erased the image will be lighter. You can adjust the opacity of the adjustment layer to control how dark or light the overall vignette effect of the adjustment layer is.