If you are a portrait photographer, especially an old one like me, you know that using a vignetter in front of your lens was almost standard practice.  I had at least 10 different gizmos I made to put in front of the lens to darken the edges of the image.  Even a white wedding dress could fade very dark ... an effect that you couldn’t do in a custom darkroom, because you just can’t “burn” the white ... there’s no light.

I’ve been using various techniques to simulate dodging and burning in Photoshop for a long time.  It isn’t hard and I’m guessing most photographers that use photoshop have figured it out.  There are at least 4 or 5 ways to simulate burning (and I’m not talking about the burn and dodge tool here).  My action creates a levels adjustment layer with no adjustments, adds a black layer mask, changes the blend mode to multiply, and changes the opacity to 50%.   I then use the brush tool at about 40% opacity and flow to paint onto the mask and “burn” in the image.  You can use a copy of the image as well, but I like using an adjustment layer instead. The effect is identical, results in a smaller file size, and I can still edit the image, including retouching it or sharpening it, without affecting data on the burn layer.   Instead of an adjustment layer, you can also just create a normal layer, and while creating the layer choose the soft light blending mode, then select the option to fill with neutral color.  Anything neutral gray on this layer has no effect, the darker the grey the more burn, and lighter the grey the more dodge.  This makes it easy to do both in a single layer, although I think it’s easier to build up the “burn” slowly with the first technique.

But much like a darkroom, I can’t use this technique to burn a white edge darker ... I think you can multiply as many layers as you want and never get it dark enough.  If you are only dealing with medium or darker colors, you don’t need this technique ... you usually can just “burn” it in.

I’ve searched the internet, and while I get lots of hits about creating a vignette, I’ve never seen a tip on how to create this effect.

It occurred to me to think of the vignette in a little different way ... more like what was happening when I used one on the camera.  Typically the vignetter was a solid piece of plastic, the edge of which was normally cut like a zig zag.  When it was placed in front of the camera you were actually taking a picture of the plastic, but it was so out of focus and so dark the effect was to just blend the edge of the photograph dark.

With this in mind here is what I tried. I was very pleased with the results, including the 11x14 print I gave my daughter.  The technique is almost identical to the burn effect above with one major difference.

Add a new layer above your image, and fill it with black.

I usually change the opacity to 50% so I can see what I’m doing.

Add a layer mask and fill it with black.

Now you can continue by painting white on your layer mask just like you were burning the image.  Use a big soft brush with  a low opacity and flow, and gradually build it in.  Because the black layer isn’t fully opaque, it will blend quite easily. 

After you get the vignette in the place you want it, you can tweak the effect by adjusting the layers opacity- I usually end up at about 70-90%.

End result?  Took me a couple of tries, but to me it looks pretty much like I had a vignetter in front of my lens when I took the shot.  Below is the before and after as well as a before and after of my grandson Nate.  The effect is subtle, which was how I typically used the vignetter in front of the lens. You can dial it in stronger if you want.