Today, I messed around with something called “bright vignette.” It’s basically adding a bright effect around the edges of a photo or video, making the center darker and the edges brighter. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it took me a bit to figure it out, but it was a fun little project.
First, I grabbed a picture I wanted to use. It was a shot of the morning sun shining through a tree with the sun at the bottom. I opened it up in my image editing software, one of those freeware ones.
Then I tried to find the “vignette” setting. Most of these programs have it, but they all seem to hide it in different places. After poking around in the menus for a while, I finally spotted it under the “effects” tab. It had some basic settings like “size” and “intensity”, and some other ones like color setting. So you can choose the color of the vignette.
- Size: This controls how far the effect extends from the edges.
- Intensity: This determines how strong the brightness is.
- Color: This setting can set the color you want.
Now, most of the time, a vignette darkens the edges. But I wanted to do the opposite – brighten them. So, I played around with the intensity setting, pushing it in the other direction, and I found the color setting, it is usually default as black, so I changed it into white. Boom! The edges started to glow. Cool!
I spent a good chunk of time just tweaking the size and intensity. I wanted a subtle effect, not something that looked like a spotlight was shining on the edges. Getting it just right took some patience. I’d make a small change, then step back and look at the whole picture. Then I’d go back and adjust it again. Back and forth, back and forth.
Finally, I got it to a point where I was happy with it. The edges had a nice, soft glow, and the center of the image was a bit darker, which actually made the main subject pop out more. I saved the image. I’m no pro, but I think it looked pretty good!
What I Learned
It’s all about experimenting. Don’t be afraid to push those sliders all the way to see what happens. You might be surprised by the results. And don’t get discouraged if it takes a while to get the hang of it. Just keep playing around until you get something you like. It is not a hard thing to learn, it is easy, just try it.
