Expert: Ran - 5/27/2009

Question
Hi, Request you to pl. tell me how to achieve the Vignette in Coreldraw / photoshop.

Thanks
Murali

Answer
Hi Murali

In Photoshop with your picture open, make sure it is not on a background layer, by double-clicking on the layer and press Enter. The layer will now be called Layer 0.

This is because Layers can have transparency, whereas the background can not.

At this point click Image/Duplicate, so that you are working on a copy, because you will want to try this several times to get the effect you want.

Press Ctrl+A (select All). A selection box will appear around your picture.

Press Q once to see the masked area, then Q again to return.

Click Select/Modify/Border and choose a suitable value. About 50 pixels works ok for a camera photo.

Again, use Q and Q to see the effect.

Click Select/Feather and choose a value (50, same as above).

Use Q and Q to see it.

Now, to get the vignette just press the Delete key, yay!

If you want to fade to a different background colour, create a new layer and slide it underneath the picture layer. Paint-bucket the new layer any colour you like.

I don't know how I would achieve this kind of effect in CorelDraw.