Photoshop How To

You'd think that Photoshop would do a better job of making it easy to create vignettes for your images, but it doesn't, according to Blake Rudis of f64 Academy. And he's right.

Adding vignettes to your images is a great way to draw attention to the center of the frame, whether it's for a portrait or to isolate a scene in a landscape photo. But Photoshop's tools for creating vignettes are rather mediocre and not particularly fast or intuitive.

"Have you ever looked for the Vignette button in Photoshop?" Rudis asks. "Were you shocked that there wasn't one there? After all this time you'd think they'd make a vignette button, but they haven't."

This is not to say Photoshop isn't good at producing vignettes, it's just clumsy about it. Rudis feels your pain and in the below video he fills you in on his secret to creating vignettes in Photoshop. And like most secrets, it's all about the sauce.

"This certainly is a shame because Photoshop is incredible for making vignettes, but you have to know the secret sauce," Rudis says. "In today's tutorial, I will show you my formula A + B + C= Perfect Vignette! A = Gradient Adjustment Layer. B = Soft Light Blend Mode. C = Blend If

Use all of them in the correct combination and you have a recipe for an incredible vignette you could ONLY get in Photoshop."

Rudis describes this process as "three techniques in Photoshop that are going to come together to make a phenomenal vignette that has so much control that you're going to absolutely love."

So how does it work? Watch his Photoshop tutorial below and then try it for yourself. Afterwards, hop on over to his channel to check out all of his photography how-to content including this video where he shows you how to fix blown-out clouds in Photoshop.