Hello folks. At my advanced age, I sometimes think I am really losing it. As long as I can remember, I simulated the effect of burning in the edges and corners of my dark room prints. I used the gradient tool on a separate layer, I think set to “Foreground to transparent”, usually to a low number like 5 to 10%. Today I was working on two images for my son that used an iPhone as a camera, and wanted me to make him nice 11”x14 “prints. But when I tried it today, the entire image got darker, even though I only moved the curser from the edge to about 1/4 of the way into he image. If you visit my web site there are over 1,000 images, all done in that manner. What am I apparently doing wrong?
thanks
Dave in NJ
www.modernpictorials.com
Dave, as we age, gracefully, digital technology just takes on the mantle of the bully, doing its best to make us begin to suspect ourselves of an advanced stage of decline. My theory is that were we actually in decline, it’s the last thing we’d notice. Like me, then, you can feel free of such doubts.
I use CS2, and to do what you want to do, I go to Filters, then to Distort, and then use the slider to taste.
Alternatively, I do it by using Layers, masking off the part of the image I don’t want to affect, and then using curves to darken as desired. I prefer this latter method, because it lets you make your vignette in a more controlled way, darkening either the shadows, the highlights or the middle tones, or all of them. Unlike the first method, which appears simply to add a black smudge that affects all the tones at once, you can make a more pleasing and controlled “look”.
This latter process can be added to in subsequent layers, decreasing the masked off area bit by bit. There’s bound to be a magical way of doing it with, at most, three taps of some key, but heaven forbid I try to learn such stressful “shortcuts”! I leave that to the computer geeks who always manage to talk the “heroes” through dark buildings whilst they, the geeks, sit in a parked vehicle with a computer and enjoy whatever drink the producers have sold as placement advertising.
