Photoshop tip: Vignettes add focus and character to photos

Link via MacWorld

Vignetting, in photographic terms, is an effect of a camera lens that results in the darkening of a photograph around its edges. It was long considered to be an unfortunate limitation in lens design, and as technology improved, camera lenses were engineered to minimize vignetting to improve image quality.

Ironically, vignetting has undergone a resurgence in recent years, but as an artistic technique. Used correctly, it adds emphasis and atmosphere to a photograph. You don’t need special lenses to create the effect anymore, as you can create and control such effects in an image editor.

There are many ways and many programs that let you achieve a vignette effect, but I’m going to show you one here that works well for me in Photoshop CS3 and CS4: the Gradient Fill Layer.