How to Darken or Vignette the Edge of Photos in Photoshop / Lens Correction Filter

Tutorial 3:

If you want to add a little interest or intensity to an image, a vignette the perfect way to bust out. It brings more attention to the main subject of an image or just to give photos a little more warmth and personality. You can create this effect in photoshop CS2 or later to accomplish this tutorial.

Adobe introduced us to the Lens Correction filter. This filter's main purpose is to help us remove common problems that can be created by camera lenses, such as barrel distortions, chromatic aberration and vignetting. It's a great addition to Photoshop's ever growing collection of photo editing tools, but there's no rule that says you have to use Photoshop the way the folks at Adobe intended. Also the same filter is designed to remove dark edges from a photo also happens to be a great tool to add it too.
Lets start it here.

This would be the photo i would be working on:

Step 1:

Open your photo in photoshop CS 5 or whichever the version you are using. Double click the background layer and rename it to "Layer 0"

Step 2:

Before we darken the edges or vignetting it. First we have to duplicate the original layer so there will be no damage to the original layer.

Step 3:

Apply the lens correction filter. With selected "Layer 2" in the layer palette, Highlighted with blue color. 

Go to the Filter menu at the top of screen, select lens correction. 

Step 4:

Lens correction dialogue box will be opened. Set values of vignette and midpoint according to your photo. After applying adjestments, click ok.

Step 5:

Set the opacity of "Layer 2", on which we have applied the "Lese correction" to 85% or according to your own choice, how dark or light you want the borders to be. 

Final:

Here is the final output of the simple tutorial.

This is how you can make your photos more promminent and enhanced. 

If you have liked the tutorial, please leave your comments.

What Cause Black Shadows at the Corner of photos / Vignetting

Examples of Vignetting 

http://www.photographymad.com/files/images/beach-vignette.jpg

http://cdn.picturecorrect.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vignette-type2.jpg

http://nenuno.co.uk/creative/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/vignetting.jpg

Problems and Solutions:

This is the most simple and common cause, also called vignetting, it can also be caused by an inappropriately sized lens hood or filters - especially when more than one filter is stacked. The extended filter rings or the hood block the lens's view at the corners.

Most likely an incorrectly oriented lens hood. Lens hoods for zoom lenses are petal shaped, with cutouts which are projected to avoid shading the corners. The largest pieces of the petal should be top and bottom, if the hood is rotated it could be the corners of the image are being blocked by the hood.

Some hoods have two long flanges and two short ones. If yours does, then try placing the long flanges on the top/bottom side of the lens rather than the left/right. Because of the native aspect ration of your film plane (chip, sensor, pick a name) (i.e., it is a horizontal rectangle) the long flanges will appear at the left and right of the frame rather than the top and bottom. This is because there is less sensor to "see" the hood on the top and bottom.

There are few other factors too.

1. Your Flash coverage narrower than the lens's field of view. In this case it can be avoided by using indirect bounce flash.
2. The polarizing filter is too big for the wide angle setting of the lens, so it "hides" the light in the corners.
3. Maybe you can find a slimline polarizing filter which has better results.
4. There is Something in the direction of the light.
5. You are using a small aperture and longer exposure.
6. You may have a lens hood that is too narrow for the lens, or a filter rim that is too thick. A polarizing filter, for example, often has a higher ring than other filters.
7. The small aperture (high f-stop number) makes the lens hood or filter rim come closer to be in focus, so that it causes a black corner instead of just severe vignetting of the corners.
8. You may have the wrong hood for that lens. A shorter hood may work better for you.It could be you're using a lens designed for a smaller sensoand then so the image circle doesn't illuminate a large enough area, leaving dark corners.
9. Finally, there could be something loose inside the lens which is causing mechanical vignetting.

Thanks, I will be uploading more helpful material.

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