Digital Camera World » vignette

Vignetting: quick fixes and how to avoid it entirely

jmeyer — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:30:58 +0000

If the corners or edges of your images sometimes appear much darker than the rest of the frame, vignetting is probably the culprit. Vignetting is aberration that occurs when less light reaches the corners of the camera’s sensor, and in the resulting image these areas are more under-exposed (or darker) than the centre.

Vignetting is common with certain lenses – especially wide-angle zooms – and when using wide apertures. It can also be caused by a physical obstruction, most typically a filter, filter holder  or ill-fitted lens hood, which prevents light from reaching the corners of the frame.

Our image before taking steps to correct vignetting

If you’re having problems with vignetting, here are some solutions.

How to correct vignetting

Reduce the aperture
Vignetting is most apparent when shooting at wide apertures such as f/4 or f/5.6, so the easiest way to reduce it is to set a smaller aperture of, say, f/8, f/11 or f/16. But be aware that the shutter speed will become slower, so you may need to increase the ISO or use a tripod to prevent camera shake.

Take care with filters
Wide-angle lenses are prone to vignetting, and it’s particularly noticeable with filters fitted. Use thin screw-in filters and remove UV filters. Remove filter holders and hold the filter flush against the lens instead. Avoid the widest focal length of wide-angle zooms.

Fix vignetting in Photoshop
If you can’t avoid vignetting as you shoot, use Photoshop or other editing software to fix the problem. Shoot in raw and process in Adobe Camera Raw, using the slider in the Lens Profile Corrections panel to remove vignetting. If vignetting is bad, you may need to crop the image too.

How to fix common lens problems in Photoshop Elements

dcworld — Fri, 06 May 2011 11:30:01 +0000

Use Photoshop Elements to solve common lens problems like coverging verticals and vignettes

Digital Camera’s 10-part series ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ builds into a complete video reference library. These easy-to-follow video guides will take you on a start-to-finish journey through perfecting your photos in the digital darkroom. In this tutorial, you’ll find out how to remove common lens problems, fixing issues like converging verticals and vignetting. When shooting from a low angle, buildings and structures can often be distorted, discover how to fix them using the Correct Camera Distortion dialogue box, along with removing unwanted vignettes. Click the links to the right and build up the complete collection with each new issue of Digital Camera.

Lomo Photoshop effect: step-by-step tutorial

dcworld — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:33:12 +0000

Get a cool toy-camera lomo look with your digital photos in this simple 6-step Photoshop Elements guide

Lo-fi toy cameras, like the Lomo and Holga, produce pictures where normal considerations of quality are completely forgotten, but interest and vibrant colours are added instead. Rather than crisp, sharp images, the resulting pictures end up with a heavy vignette, lack of detail, blurred edges and surreal colour – but surprisingly the effect is rather pleasing. In this tutorial we’re going to take the image traits of these cameras and apply them to a digital image in Photoshop to recreate the lomo look. You will learn how to work with layers, masks, perspective correction and gradient fills to build up and apply the lomo effect. Remember to download the start image from the link below.

1. Prepare in Camera Raw

Open toycamera_before.dng in Adobe Camera Raw, select the White Balance tool and click the grey area of the 2010 sign. Select the Straighten tool and draw a line horizontally, parallel with the pavement. Set Exposure to 0.35, Recovery to 65, Fill Light to 15, Brightness to 20, Clarity to 20 and Vibrance to 50, then click on Open Image.

2. Correct the distortion

Go to Filter>CorrectCameraDistortion. Set the Vertical Perspective value to -20. Hit OK. To minimise the crop, use the Rectangular Marquee tool to make a selection from below the pier entrance to the bottom of the image. Go to Image>Transform>Perspective and increase the width at the bottom. Use the Crop tool to remove the chequered background.

3. Create depth of field

Duplicate the Background layer, then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and enter a Radius of 15 pixels. Click on the Background layer and go to Layer>NewAdjustmentLayer>Levels. Click OK without making an adjustment. Hold down Alt and hoven between the Levels and top layer. Left click when the cursor changes shape to clip the layers together.

4. Using a Layer Mask

Click into the Levels layer’s mask and then select the Gradient tool from the Tools palette. From the gradient options, click the preview and select a Black/White gradient. Click OK, then select Radial from the Gradient Type menu. Click and drag from the centre of the image to the far left to reveal the sharp image beneath.

5. Add a vignette

To add a vignette effect, click on the top layer and then go to Layer>New>Layer. Select Edit>FillLayer and then choose White from the Contents menu. Go to Filter>CorrectCameraDistortion, then in the options menu decrease the Vignette amount to -50. Click OK. Click on the Blending Mode drop-down in the Layers palette and select Multiply.

6. Lighten the tones

Make sure that the top layer is selected and go to Layer>NewAdjustmentLayer>Levels. Set Shadows to 8 and Highlights to 233, lightening the picture. Click OK, then go to Layer>NewAdjustmentLayer>Hue/Saturation and increase Master Saturation to +20. To finish off, select Flatten Image from the layer options menu.