Photoshop Elements: Quick Vignette for Highlighting

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Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6

February 22, 2008

Make a quick vignette to draw attention to one section of your photo. The area outside your selection is blurred and darkened.

Before After
Vignette - before Vignette - after

To create a quick vignette:

  1. Open the photo and duplicate it on a new layer to preserve the original. Work with the duplicate layer. (If you make a mistake, you will always have the original photo on the background layer to start again.)

  2. Select the duplicate layer and draw an elliptical selection around the section of the photo you want to highlight.

    1. Select the Elliptical Marquee tool.
    2. On the tool options bar, enter a Feather of 5px. Feathering blends the edges of the vignette with the background. For softer blending, use more feathering (20-40px).
    3. Click-and-drag an elliptical selection.

      4. Vignette selection

  3. From the Select menu, select Inverse to apply any future changes to the area outside your highlighted section.

  4. Apply a Gaussian Blur:

    1. From the Filter menu, select Blur, then Gaussian Blur.
    2. In the Gaussian Blur window, select the desired blur.(This example uses a blur of 3, but other photos may look better with less blur).

    3. Click OK.

      Vignette blurred

  5. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment level:

    1. In the Layers palette, select the Hue/Saturation adjustment level from the drop-down list.

      Hue/Saturation layer

    2. In the Hue/Saturation window, drag the Lightness slider to the left to darken the vignette.

      Hue/Saturation window

    3. Click OK.

Tips

To quickly access the Elliptical Marquee tool, press M. This selects the marquee tool that you used previously. Press M again until the Elliptical Marquee tool is selected.

Do you need to move the marquee you just drew? Make sure that the Elliptical Marquee tool is selected and that the New icon is selected in the options bar. Then, click-and-drag to move the selection. Warning: If you try to use the Move tool to move a selection marquee, it moves the selected area of the photo, too.

You can also create interesting vignettes by using a different type of adjustment layer, such as Levels or Photo Filter.

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Updated on November 9, 2009