LET’S GET STARTED

by David W. Powell

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Lightroom Classic Post-Crop Vignetting

From the American Heritage College Dictionary:

vignetting tr.v. 1. To soften the edges of a picture to fade gradually into the background.

Photo-speak and English don’t always line up… in this case they do.

Back in the day, when we made prints with enlargers and chemicals, darkening the edges a little was standard practice for fine print makers. Today we have the Post-Crop Vignetting tool in Lr to make the effect simple, very malleable, and NONDESTRUCTIVE.

In the development module, Effects Post-Crop Vignetting panel, the Amount and Feather sliders are the two I use most often. Using these together one can produce subtle to dramatic effects. If you change your mind on the crop the effect follows the new crop (that’s the post-crop part). If you hate it, you can pull it back or start over (that’s the nondestructive part), unlike the throw-out-the-test-print days. My trash cans used to fill up quickly.

Moving the Amount slider to left (-) darkens the edges and to the right (+) lightens them.

The Feather slider softens the effect as you move it to the right.

For a first look you might try:

Amount -25
Midpoint 50
Roundness 0
Feather 60
Highlights 0

and work from there.

Play around and have fun. You might try positive vignetting as well…  I don’t think it works very often.  I tend to overdo things at first, then after living with it awhile, go back and soften things up a fair amount. The other two sliders, Midpoint and Roundness, change the shape of the vignette. I don’t use these often. But I do go back and use the Adjustment Brush (K) and Graduated Filter (M) for alterations and touch-ups… more about that and those tools at a later date.

Give it a try if you haven’t and let me know what you think.

 

 

I surprised myself. I think I like the green filtered, positive vignetted, B&W #7 and the more extreme vignetted best… you don’t know if you don’t try.