4 Quick Ways to Add Vignetting in Post-Processing

What is vignetting?

Vignetting is the effect of darkening the corners of an image. Often vignetting is simply called ' vignette '

In a broader sense, vignetting is changes in the brightness of an image from the center to the edges of the image. You can also do 'reverse vignetting', where the edges are lighter than the center of the image.

Above is an example of the vignetting produced by the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor lens when used on a full-frame Nikon D700 camera with the aperture fully open, the lens focused at infinity, and a white sheet on a tripod. There is a noticeable drop in brightness at the corners of the image, and the brightest part of the image is in the center of the image.

Considering the fact that when using full-frame Nikon FX lenses, or any other lenses for 35 mm film on cropped Nikon DX cameras, the matrix of the cropped camera captures only the central part of the image, the vignetting effect in this case is almost completely reduced to zero.

Aperture control reduces vignetting

Vignetting is directly related to the F number. The higher the F number (the more the aperture is closed), the less vignetting. And vice versa, the lower the F number (the wider the aperture is open), the more noticeable the vignetting. You can read how to control the 'F' number in the 'aperture' section.

Dependence of vignetting on aperture. There is less vignette when the aperture is closed.

I have never seen information that focusing distance also affects the degree of vignetting . Different lenses exhibit different degrees of vignetting when focusing at infinity and at MDF (minimum focusing distance). I noticed this effect when using a cropped lens on a full-frame camera, when with MDF the lens did not produce a vignette at all, and when focusing at infinity the vignette was simply terrible. Below is an unusual example of a photograph that shows the relationship between focusing distance and vignetting strength when using a full-frame camera in normal mode and a cropped lens.

Unusual vignetting effect. A cropped lens does not give a vignette with MDF on a full-frame camera.

Depending on the type of lens, the relationship between vignetting and focusing distance manifests itself differently. Below is an example of different degrees of vignetting when using a Nikon 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D AF Nikkor lens on a Nikon D700 camera; with MDF, vignetting is stronger than when focusing at infinity.

Vignetting difference

Also, zoom lenses have different degrees of vignetting at different focal lengths . Usually the strongest vignette is noticeable at extreme focal lengths.

For example, for landscape photography, vignetting is often extremely undesirable, therefore, in order to obtain images without vignetting, you need to shoot at closed apertures. And in portrait photography, vignetting can often be beneficial.

Light vignette in a portrait photo

Vignetting is measured by the degree to which an image's brightness drops in the center and corners of the image. For example, vignetting -1E.V. means that the edges of the image are darkened 1 stop or 1 stop more than the center of the image. One stop is equal to twice the exposure.

Another reason for vignetting can be filters and lens hoods. Very often, vignetting appears in photographs that were taken with a lens with an incorrect lens hood . Typically, hoods have a 'tulip' shape, and on one side the petals of a 'tulip hood' are smaller than on the other, this is due to the rectangular shape of the matrix or film. If you mix up the sides of the lens hood or do not install the lens hood correctly, you can ruin a whole series of photographs. Sometimes it is simply impossible to compensate for the vignette caused by a filter or lens hood and you have to crop the image.

Vignetting is very easy to fix by editing RAW files. Likewise, the vignetting effect can be enhanced specifically to achieve an artistic effect, as in the image below. Many cameras have a built-in vignetting correction processor. For example, cameras Nikon D700, D5200, etc. have this function. peripheral illumination function is responsible for controlling vignetting . Typically, vignetting is done specifically in order to highlight a key object in a photograph and create the desired visual tension.

Specially added strong vignetting

Personal experience

I'm not at all worried about the vignette effect, since I almost always shoot in RAW. The vignetting effect is very critical only when using cropped lenses on full-frame cameras; for example, such a vignette is unacceptable. Several times I didn't tighten the lens hood all the way and ended up with a vignette in the image. Many photographers very often overdo the vignette, and the effect itself occurs in almost every second portrait photograph.

Conclusions:

Vignetting is a physical feature of lenses in the distribution of light flux from the center to the edges of the image. Typically, vignetting simply refers to the darkening of the corners of an image . To reduce the degree of darkening of the corners of the image, you should close the aperture. Also, the vignette is affected by focusing distance . Vignetting can be easily corrected automatically by the camera itself or using software . When shooting in RAW, you can achieve almost complete restoration of the brightness of the edges of the image without loss of quality. A vignette can also serve as a nice artistic effect , especially for portrait shots.

↓ ↓ ↓ Like ↓ ↓ ↓ - we help the project. Thank you for your attention. Arkady Shapoval.

Post processing

Good day to all.

My name is Yarosheshevsky Dmitry Sergeevich, I am 28 years old, according to the horoscope Libra :).
I have been working in the field of computer graphics for more than 5 years. Now I am a freelancer and mainly do architectural visualization. Many people ask me the question - how do I do post-processing in my works?
Today I decided to share my secret with you. 🙂 Of course, if you are a Max Guru and you have time for rough renderings, re-renders, fiddling with color and gamma settings, then you can achieve the desired result directly in Max itself.
In this case, you don’t have to read further :). But if deadlines are running out and you discover in the morning that hours of calculation have been spent on a not very bright, not very “tasty” picture. Do not despair! This processing method is for you. So let's get started!
For example, we have a picture that came out after rendering from 3D max.

This is not the worst option, but I still would not send such quality to the customer.
We'll fix it now. Open our image in Photoshop.
🙂 The first thing to start with is to add contrast, since our picture is a little dull. I prefer to work separately with the highlight and shadow areas.
So, to select the light areas of the image, you need to go to the channels panel and click on the RGB channel while holding down the Ctrl key.

Done.
Return to layers and press the key combination Ctrl+j. Thus, all the light areas of the image were copied to a new layer (let's call it light). Assign the Screen mode to the new layer and adjust its saturation to taste (reduce the opacity if it is overexposed or duplicate the light layer if the picture is still dark).

When the light began to suit us, we proceed to the shadows.
The same.
Go to channels, hold Ctrl and click on the RGB channel. NOW CAREFULLY! Make sure that the main layer is active.

Now we have the light areas of the image selected again.
And we need shady areas. Use the key combination Ctrl+Shift+i to invert the selection. Press Ctrl+j and name the new layer “Shadow”. We assign it the blending mode Overlay or Soft Light (see what is more suitable for your image). If the shadows have become too active, you can use a curve (Ctrl+M) to lighten them a little. This is what I have at this stage. You should also get:

In my opinion, this version of contrast manipulation provides much more possibilities than, for example, “brightness/contrast”.
Thus, the most “intimate” areas of our image, which remain inaccessible to standard tools, are under control. The next stage of our work is color correction and white balance.
Many novice artists and photographers pay insufficient attention to this point (They think that setting up the camera is enough. gee). We will try to fix this error. There are several options for editing white balance.
One of them, the simplest, is Autokolor. But I want to talk about a more universal method and how I use it. The first step is to duplicate our main layer and call it “color correct”.
Let's work on it:

Click Filter=>blur=>Average. We got a monochromatic color fill. This is the sum of all the shades in our picture, which we need to reduce to absolute gray. To do this, hide all the top layers (so as not to interfere) and click on our fill with a pipette.

The color appeared in foreground color.
Now press Ctrl+Z, open the Curve correction window (Ctrl+M) and use the middle eyedropper to select our color in the “foreground color”.

The “Color correct” layer will change the color scheme.
The effect will be whiter and more noticeable depending on how much the original image is unbalanced (immersed in a particular shade). We return everything to its place and see what happened.

Here I would like to give a little clarification.
The fact is that this technique in its pure form can change the source quite dramatically.
And if our goal, for example, is to show sunlight (predominant yellow) light in the interior, then at first glance it may seem that this method of color correction is not acceptable. But this is only at first glance. In this case, the layers (light and shadow) that we created earlier, while remaining in the color scheme of the original image, acquire another useful property. They soften the effects of the adjustment layer and do not allow the color to fall in the opposite direction. In addition, we can always wipe with an elastic band the areas illuminated by the sun (or other warm source) without affecting the boundaries of our own and falling shadows. And, of course, brushes with which I simply paint sunlight, but more on that later. Second step of color adjustment.
This method did not come to me right away.
I spent a long time studying photos from professional photographers, re-reading Photoshop forums and post-processing tutorials. It took a long time to achieve depth of color and shadows. Sometimes it’s too burnt out, sometimes it’s too dull. The solution was accidentally found in the album of a girl photographer who posted graphs of the curves she uses. The secret is to kill pure black. Anyone who has been involved in painting knows that pure black is not used in painting. Only when mixed with other colors. Same with the graphics. So, let's kill the black one.
We will do this using the Eastmens layer CURVES.

I created 2 templates for myself, which I use in almost every job (whichever one I like best). Now I’ll tell you about each of them.

Turns black into deep blue, and white into yellowish.

Turns black into red and white into greenish.
Of course, this mask is not 100% safe to use unless you are going to create a radioactively apocalyptic interior. 🙂

In my example, I used the second version of the curve graph with the fill reduced to 25%.

This is what the laers panel should look like at this point.
It's time for brushes and volumetric light to give our interior an airy feel.
Everything is simple here! Using an eyedropper, select the white areas in the main layer, duplicate them to the very top, set the mode to screen and blur Gaussian Blure as you like. Adjust the transparency and saturation. Then create a separate layer at the very top and assign it the Vivid Light mode. Make a Fill of 10-20%, almost white (slightly yellowish) color of the brush and pass with a blurry brush over the sunny areas of the image.

This is what happened to me.

The final stage.
In this area of work, I try to bring photographic effects into the image (to make it more convincing): all sorts of aberrations, vignetting, etc.
Let's keep all this goodness in history, and then merge all the layers into one.
If the color scheme of the picture is confusing (after such manipulations the balance may be upset), you can repeat the color correction step (see above). I like everything and can safely begin the finishing touch.
Copy the layer and apply the Lens Correctin filter to it.

I think you can figure this out yourself.
🙂 And of course Sharpen. I use Smart Sharpen.

here are its settings.
OK it's all over Now!

Finally, I would like to say:
- Guys, do not try to use this method as a panacea for all problems.
Each picture is individual and there is no ideal solution for all cases. This is skill. Understanding all the subtleties comes with experience. So, create, learn, and be happy! Good luck! Thank you for your attention!
I hope my lesson was useful.

Some tips for optimizing performance + Detailed description of settings

I decided to move the topic to a separate blog, since the previous one turned out to be too large and inconvenient to view and edit. I supplemented the topic with screenshots and items forgotten last time :)

A few tips for increasing FPS in the game, as well as deciphering the image settings:

POSTPROCESSING:

— In post-processing, the only parameter that noticeably affects performance on my video card is ssao and the advanced option from NVIDIA. Difference:

- Disable in-game anti-aliasing (it's still poor) and enable anti-aliasing through the NVIDIA control panel. Firstly, it does not take away the FPS, unlike the game one (in action scenes - 1-2 frames), and secondly, it smooths out better (whoever shouts that it will blur the picture is mistaken, it will not blur anything if you do not turn it on together in-game with him)

Regarding anti-aliasing, the Poles used a kind of smaa in the game, created on their own. And in the control panel you can enable FXAA - these are two different types of anti-aliasing. I can’t provide screenshots, because due to the way the fast fxaa shader works, it’s not possible to capture the effect of turning it on in screenshots (it would be more correct to say that for some reason it’s not noticeable in screenshots). In some scenes during the game, however, it is clear that it works better than what is in the game. But I’m not forcing anyone, the settings are to your taste.

— “Frame depth” (popularly soap-soap) — makes the image blurry depending on the distance to the object. Doesn't increase or decrease FPS on my configuration. However, I am sure that on very weak systems it will increase a couple of FPS.

- “Blur” and “motion blur” - everything is clear from the name. The effect is up to your taste. In action scenes it can cause a drop in FPS, I recommend turning it off. Effect:

- “ Chromatic aberration ” or something like that. FPS does not change, the effect is strange. Designed to make the image photorealistic or just lame. Example:

— «Image clarity , also known as sharpe, artificially makes the image clearer. Doesn't affect FPS. We put it to taste.

— «Glow " - has almost no effect on FPS. I don't recommend turning it off. Makes the sun sunny-bright, and so do other light sources. Without it, the fire is just a texture, and the sun is just a red-yellow spot.

— “ Light mines ” (oh, this wonderful Russian localization, people call it “the rays of God”), weak impact on FPS, I don’t recommend turning it off:

Basic settings:

— Disable vertical synchronization in the game, on powerful systems it does not affect performance, but on video cards of the 650TI/660/760/750ti level, etc., it will take 1-5 frames, depending on the scene. Vertical sync eliminates image tearing in fast-moving scenes. In The Witcher, I rarely notice them, so you can safely sacrifice the settings if you are not a hereditary aesthete.

— Turn on LOW shadow quality , believe me, you won’t notice the difference, but free up some video memory and get a decent FPS boost, especially in cities and action scenes. The proof is a comparison of low and ultra quality shadows.

— Disable Hair Works , on average video cards it completely kills performance. Hair Works or Hairy Works make Geralt's hair super smooth, super smooth and super hairy. On my video card, the setting can drop FPS from 45 to 17, depending on the scene. It is imperative to disable it if you are not the fifth point on 20 titans or do not use top-end video cards.

— You can lower the screen resolution a little , this is one of the most demanding parameters, it eats up even more than the range of drawing vegetation. Check it out. For example, if your native screen resolution is 1920*1080, try reducing it to 1600*900 or 1366*768 - you will get a 1.5 times FPS boost depending on the degree of reduction. However, this will significantly spoil the picture. (Screen resolution is the size of the picture that will be displayed on your screen; if you set it to a lower value, the picture will be smaller and therefore stretched to fill the entire usable area of the screen, making it less clear.) The performance of this parameter is greatly influenced by the bus memory of your video card, the amount of video memory and its frequency.

— The range of drawing vegetation is one of the most demanding parameters. On mid-range video cards like gtx760, I highly recommend not setting its value above “high”. In general, if you don’t mind looking into the distance, you can set it to either a medium value or a low value, which will greatly increase FPS. Comparison of ultra and low settings

— It is possible, through the configuration file “user.settings” along the path “C:UsersYour usernameDocumentsThe Witcher 3” to completely disable the grass, which will greatly improve performance. Open the above file with Notepad and find the line “GrassDensity” - change its value to 0.

— Weed advice from Mr. Nobody. , from the comments below: “Instead, I advise you to delete the Grass_ps file, the result will be the same BUT when you delete the Grass file, why the friezes disappear completely, and when you delete the grass through “GrassDensity” with a notepad, the friezes in some places still remain. This is the kind of interesting optimization the Poles have)))"

— Water quality . In my case, it does not affect either the quality of water or the FPS, on even weaker configurations than mine, some influence is possible, for example, the presence or absence of seasickness in Geralt:

— Relief detailing . Translated from NVIDIA's website: "The Terrain Quality setting improves surface geometric detail by applying tessalation, but in our estimated final design this setting had absolutely no impact on performance in any of the thirty locations tested." — I fully support this statement, because I didn’t notice anything wrong with this setting. It stands on the beyond and does not interfere.

- “ Level of detail ” - has an extremely weak impact on performance. I don’t even understand why some of the settings have levels in this game, if they don’t affect anything in any way? However. Level of detail - does not increase the detail of the surrounding world, as it might seem. It just increases the visibility range of blood spatter and other details during combat. Due to the impossibility of carrying out 2 absolutely identical battles on 4 different settings of this parameter, I cannot provide any exact data, but I can assure you that the visibility range of blood splashes at a distance of 2 meters or 8 meters a priori should not affect the FPS in a not too ancient computer .

— “ Amount of grass ” — will waste FPS if the system is average and the vegetation rendering range value is above average. I advise you to set it to a low value. The difference is not big and does not spoil the atmosphere. The approximate effect of the “low” setting is 5 blades of grass per centimeter. High - 15 blades of grass per centimeter.

— “ Texture quality ” — If your video card has 2GB of video memory, set the value to “high” - this is the MAXIMUM value in terms of quality. It differs from the Beyond only in that the Beyond uses more video memory to store already loaded textures. If your video card has 1GB of video memory, set it to “medium” to avoid freezes and freezes. The difference between ULTRA and HIGH quality, for those who have any doubts.

GENERAL TIPS:

— Defragment the disk (if the fragmentation was decent, this will increase the overall speed of the system, as well as speed up the loading time of saved locations, etc.). And now, pay attention, breaking the veil - if you have 8GB of RAM - a swap file larger than 3-5 GB will not do anything, but will only make it worse.

— If you have friezes in your videos, open the file “user.settings” with notepad along the path “C:UsersYour usernameDocumentsThe Witcher 3” and find the line “MovieFramerate=30” in it, instead of “30” put “60”.

— If everything is really bad, then in the interface settings you can disable the display of the minimap; in earlier versions of the game (I don’t know how it is now, maybe it’s the same) on some configurations disabling the minimap added 4-5 fps. But you can just as well disable Geralt, I’m sure this will also increase FPS :)

— PhysX — Not regulated in the game. This feature is simply there. Effect: adds realistic physics of the environment, fabric, dust, leaves and other things to the game. How exactly it works in The Witcher 3 is a moot point. Previously, it seemed to me that if I disable this setting in the video card control panel, the FPS in the game would increase, but then I realized that when I save and load the game, some effects disappear because they appear or disappear randomly. For example, if you save while dust or leaves are flying past Geralt under the influence of the wind - which is part of PhysX support - then upon subsequent loading these effects will no longer exist. Therefore, to be on the safe side, I recommend doing this:

The actions taken in the screenshots above will make the CPU the default processor for PhysX, which in turn will reduce the load on the video card, theoretically. However, in the case of the “Polish-style” crooked vozmak, it is not a fact that the game uses this technology in exactly this context, and due to the randomness of the special effects, it is difficult to track its true impact on performance. But I feel like it helps.

— If you play on a patch lower than 1.5, and have a video card based on Kepler architecture, then delete this file — “APEX_ClothingGPU_x64.dll” along the path of The Witcher 3 Wild Huntbinx64 — you will get a very serious performance boost in action scenes.

Video proof:

Vignetting. How to remove vignetting in Photoshop and Lightroom.

Today you will learn about such a photography defect as vignetting , and, naturally, I will tell you how to deal with it.

As usual, let's start with the definition.

"Vignette" is translated from French as "saver".

Everyone has probably come across the word “vignette” more often - a photo frame that covers part of the image area. In this case, this is an artistic effect, and not a defect in the photograph (as in our case).

Vignetting is a photographic defect that manifests itself in a decrease in image illumination from the center to the edges of the frame.

It looks something like this

And ideally it should look like this

A few words about the causes of vignetting.

The main and most important reason for this defect is the limitation of the light beam by various elements included in the lens design.

To reduce vignetting in this case, you need to increase the aperture value.

If you are using a zoom lens, dark edges may also appear at maximum magnification.

Another reason for reducing the brightness of the frame at the edges is the use of a hood and filters with high edges - this will be especially noticeable at a wide angle (that is, if you have a lens with a focal length of 18-105 mm, then at 18 mm the defect will appear more strongly), called This is mechanical vignetting .

If you wear a cap in sunny weather, then part of your face will be in the shadow; the longer the visor, the greater the shadow. It’s the same with a lens - the longer the edges of the filter (or hood), the higher the risk of dark edges appearing in the frame.

The question is brewing: How to remove vignetting without graphic editors?

For ease of understanding, I will tell you using the Nikon 18-105 mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX VR Nikkor lens as an example.

Increase the aperture value. For example: you decide to take a portrait of a person at a focal length of 18 mm and aperture of 3.5. It would be wiser to increase the aperture value to 5.6 or 6.3, this way you will kill two birds with one stone - there will be less vignetting and less aberration.
Do not take photographs at maximum magnification (in our case 105mm), otherwise darkening will appear at the edges of the frame.
At a wide angle (in our case, 18mm), vignetting from the lens hood or filters may appear. There is only one way out - use a filter and a lens hood with low edges.
Use more expensive optics and switch to prime lenses.

And now about eliminating vignetting in graphic editors.

Traditionally, we will use Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe LightRoom 3.4.1 for this.

How to remove vignetting in Photoshop. Lens Correction.

Next Filter -> Lens Correction (Filters -> Lens Correction) - you can also use the hot keys “Shift + Ctrl + R”, and the keyboard layout should be in English.

How to remove vignetting in Photoshop

There are two ways to remove vignetting in Photoshop using the Lens Correction filter - automatically, based on data about the lens and camera model, and manually.

In automatic mode, you need to select Auto Correction, select Vignette, then select the camera manufacturer (Camera Make), camera model (Camera Model) and lens model (Lens model), if your camera model or lens is not in the list, click the button “Search Online” and Photoshop will search for suitable profiles on the Internet.

If you can’t remove vignetting in Photoshop using the automatic method, you can use the manual method (Custom)

How to remove vignetting in Photoshop

We are interested in the Amount and Midpoint sliders.

Amount – removes darkening at the edges, and midpoint adjusts the degree of darkening from the edges to the center of the image.

How to remove vignetting in Photoshop – Camera Raw 6.3.

If you shoot in Raw format, you can use Camera Raw Converter to eliminate vignetting.

Select the Lens Corrections module. Further adjustments can be made manually or automatically.

How to remove vignetting in Photoshop

In automatic mode, in the “Profile” menu, activate the “Enable Lens Profile Corrections” item (activate the lens correction profile), and data about the camera and lens model will be obtained from the raw file (if this does not happen, select them from the list manually) and produce elimination of vignetting in auto mode. You can then manually adjust the settings using the “Vignetting” slider and achieve the perfect result.

Manual mode – Manual.

How to remove vignetting in Photoshop

To remove vignetting in Photoshop in the Camera Raw plugin, use the Amount and Midpoint sliders in the Lens Vignetting panel.

How to remove vignetting in lightroom .

Import images into Lightroom.

Next, go to the Develop module -> Lens Corrections.

How to remove vignetting in Lightroom

Next, activate the “Enable Profile Corrections” item, and Lightroom will automatically remove the vignetting.

You can adjust the automatic algorithm using manual settings using the “Vignetting” slider.

Removing vignetting in Lightroom is as easy as shelling pears, and its main advantage over Photoshop is that you can apply these settings to dozens (hundreds and thousands) of photos at once.

You can also deal with this photographic defect in manual mode – Manual

How to remove vignetting in Lightroom

The sliders familiar to us from Photoshop are Amount (magnitude) and Midpoint (midpoint).

The principle of operation is the same as in the Lens Corrections module of the Camera Raw plugin in Photoshop.

Amount – removes darkening at the edges, and midpoint adjusts the degree of darkening from the edges to the center of the frame.

When taking photographs, you should pay attention to such photographic defects as digital noise and movement (image blur), but do not get 100% carried away by the technical parameters of shooting, remember also about the artistic component of the frame (the basics of composition in photography). Coming home after shooting, it’s a sacred task to process photos (or at least view them), but monitors often fake colors (especially at factory settings) - so it’s better to calibrate the monitor at home, so to speak, get closer to the ideal.

Put photo processing on autopilot with the training “Adobe Lightroom - it's as easy as 1,2,3”

Vignetting: how to use this technique

Vignetting is a twofold concept. On the one hand, this is an artistic technique that allows you to create a frame for a portrait and focus attention on the main subject of photography. On the other hand, these are inappropriate shadows that appear in the corners of the image when the light hits unevenly. How to “make friends” with this effect and make its appearance always appropriate? Reading...

Have you noticed that some of the photos have dark edges? This is vignetting. In some places this effect is appropriate: it focuses attention on the central part of the image, in other cases it is a disadvantage. The fact is that during the shooting process, less light reaches the corners of the image, which is due to the laws of optics and the structure of the lens. Speaking in vignettes, we once again emphasize the importance of shadow in photography.

Technically, vignetting is the effect of decreasing brightness from the center of the frame to the edges. The term comes from the French word “vignette,” which refers to a frame that covers the edges of an image.

In photography, vignetting refers to both an artistic technique and a flaw that appears during photography. Let's figure out what's what...

Vignetting as an artistic technique

Vignette is relevant in portrait photography: slight darkening of the corners helps to concentrate the audience's attention on the model in the center of the frame. It distracts from the background, which is especially appropriate in cases where it is unsuccessful.

In addition, you can enclose a flower, a castle, or any other object that you want to highlight in a similar frame.
This technique allows you to direct your gaze in the right direction and hide minor imperfections. The main thing in this matter is not to overdo it, so that the darkened corners do not turn into a mourning frame.
Vignetting as a defect

While in portrait photography a vignette is often appropriate, in landscape photography it can ruin the whole picture. Imagine an image of a clear sky framed by dark corners - ridiculous!

The occurrence of automatic vignetting is facilitated by an open aperture and fast lenses. By reducing the opening degree of the aperture by just a few stops, you can almost completely eliminate the defect. The appearance of dark corners is most typical for wide-angle lenses and optical systems with high aperture. It is believed that the better the lens, the less vignetting. In addition, filters and protective lenses with high sides can cause a similar problem.

It is worth noting that many modern cameras are equipped with an automatic darkening function. There is a “peripheral lighting correction” item in the camera menu; if it is available, the problem is solved; if not, the function can be loaded.

But even if it was not possible to “equip” the camera with such functions, it is always possible to correct the image in Lightroom and Photoshop by simply moving the slider on the corresponding tab. But this method will not work if the defect is caused by a thick filter frame. In this case, the excess will have to be cut off.

Having made friends with the vignetting effect, you can easily adjust images and get expressive portraits with a visual frame.

Vignetting in photography

Taking a closer look at various photographs that you can find on the Internet, you will see that some of them have darkened edges. Or the edges may be weakly saturated in relation to the center, and this can be either a sharp contrast or a gradual decrease in brightness intensity. That is, in this case we are dealing with the effect of a decrease in the brightness and saturation of the frame from its central part to the edges. This effect in photography is called vignetting. This phenomenon is due to the laws of optics and the design of the lens. When the vignetting effect appears, how to remove it and in what cases it can be useful - we will talk about this in more detail in this article.

When does the vignetting effect occur?

The word “vignetting” comes from the French word Vignette, or “vignette,” which means a frame that covers the edges of an image. Initially, vignette meant decorating borders in books, but later the word vignetting began to be used for portraits in photography, in which the image is clearly visible in the center, but gradually disappears at the edges. Typically, vignetting refers to the darkening of the corners of an image caused by the physical properties of lenses in terms of the distribution of light flux. A similar effect also occurs when shooting projected images or movies from a projection screen.

Lens Vignetting

In photography, vignetting most often occurs when using wide-angle lenses, telephoto lenses and optical systems characterized by large aperture ratios. As a rule, vignetting provides a change in the brightness of the image from the center to the edges of the image, but with computer processing it is possible to create the opposite effect - when the edges of the photo turn out to be lighter than the center of the image.

The vignetting effect becomes very noticeable and stands out when you install a lens designed for a camera with a cropped APS-C format matrix on a full-frame camera. It is worth noting that vignetting is often an accidental and completely undesirable effect for the photographer, caused by incorrect camera settings or a lens defect. There is a widespread belief that the less vignetting, the better and better quality the lens.

There is such a parameter as the vignetting coefficient. This is a quantity that characterizes the drop in illumination of the image created by the optical system. In general, the vignetting effect is determined by the degree to which the image brightness decreases in the center and corners of the image. Specifically, -1EV vignetting indicates that the edges of the image are one stop darker than the center of the photo. One stop, as you know, is equal to a drop in exposure by half.

Vignetting at the edges of the frame Photo after correcting vignette and lens distortion

What determines the vignetting effect? The following main reasons for this effect can be identified:

— Vignetting can occur due to physical blocking of light along the periphery of the lens. This vignette is often called physical vignetting.

Physical blocking of light can be caused by defects in the camera itself, mistakes by the photographer, installation of a large number of filters on the lens, or skewed lenses. Vignetting appears, for example, when a protective lens or a filter with high sides is put on the lens, which significantly increases the manifestation of this effect.

— Vignetting can be caused by using multiple lenses, such as a telephoto lens, a macro lens, or a wide-angle lens. After all, each lens refracts light and narrows the effective aperture, and in many modern lenses the number of such elements can reach twenty or more.

This is called optical vignetting and most often this effect appears when using cheap, not the highest quality optics. In this regard, the photographer must not overdo the lenses on the camera, otherwise he may encounter noticeable optical distortions and defects.

— There is also natural vignetting. The amount of light reaching the edges of the sensor is reduced compared to the center according to the inverse square law, which suggests that light will take slightly longer to reach the corners of the image sensor.

In addition, the effective opening of the optics relative to the corners of the light sensor is elliptical, resulting in the latter receiving even less light, thereby creating a defect in perspective. Some lenses are more prone to this phenomenon, while others are designed specifically to avoid this problem. The effect caused by natural vignetting tends to be less noticeable in photographs compared to the above two.

Speaking about photographer mistakes that can lead to the vignetting effect, it is worth noting such common cases when the lens hood is simply put on the lens incorrectly. Usually the hood is shaped like a “tulip”, with smaller tulip petals placed on one side than on the other. If in a hurry you mix up the sides of the lens hood and install it incorrectly on the lens, you can ruin your photos with the vignetting effect. It should also be mentioned that today there are special filters that allow the photographer to use vignetting intentionally in order to draw the viewer's attention to the center of the frame.

How to get rid of vignetting?

Unwanted vignetting can be partially or completely removed by editing photos either programmatically or automatically using built-in functions in the camera itself. Many modern digital cameras have a built-in vignetting correction engine. For example, a similar function can be found in Nikon cameras.

In Canon cameras, a function called “peripheral illumination control” is responsible for correcting vignetting. This function is designed to correct vignetting depending on the lens installed. To do this, however, it is necessary that the camera recognizes the optics used.

In graphic editors, for example, Adobe Photoshop, the vignetting effect can be removed quite easily. Moreover, the easiest way to correct vignetting is by editing RAW files. In general, when photographing in RAW format, you can achieve almost complete restoration of the brightness of the edges of the image without loss of quality and fine details. In graphic editors, you can not only remove a vignette, but also enhance it specifically to get an interesting artistic effect. The most difficult or almost impossible to remove is vignetting, which appears due to the use of lenses for cropped cameras or a filter on full-frame cameras.

During shooting, you can close the aperture to reduce the vignetting effect, that is, the degree to which the corners of the image darken. Vignetting is directly related to the relative aperture opening in the optical system (F). The further the aperture is closed (and the higher the F value), the less vignetting will appear. On the contrary, the wider the aperture is opened, the more noticeable the vignetting becomes. Also, the degree of darkening of the edges of the image has a certain relationship with the focusing distance. Typically, the vignetting effect is most pronounced at extreme focal lengths.

Is vignetting a defect or a creative technique?

If we consider the purely technical side, the vignetting effect, of course, is a defect in the photographic image caused by shortcomings in the camera or optics. No wonder the absence of vignetting is considered one of the signs of a high-quality lens. Despite this, the drop in brightness from the center of a photo to its edges is often used by photographers as an interesting artistic technique. However, in many situations the vignetting effect is unacceptable. For example, in landscape photography, vignetting is completely undesirable in most cases. Pictures with a blue sky with vignetting look rough and somewhat spoil the overall picture.

Artistic vignette

In turn, there are photography genres where vignetting looks appropriate and advantageous. First of all, this is portrait photography, where such an effect allows you to concentrate the viewer’s attention on the center of the composition, that is, on the face of the person in the portrait. The vignetting effect can be used in many other genres in which it is necessary to highlight a key object in a photograph, create the desired visual tension or a certain mood. In particular, this effect is optimal for designing wedding photographs or photographs from anniversaries and family celebrations. Vignetting is also sometimes used to give photographs an antique feel.

In principle, whether to use vignetting or get rid of it is an individual choice of the photographer. In order to achieve a vignetting effect purposefully, for artistic purposes, you can apply special filters or use post-processing software tools. There are several ways to create a vignetting effect in graphic editors.

For example, vignetting for a photograph is very easy to create through the transparency of layers. To do this, you need to open the desired photo in a graphics editor, create a new transparent layer above the background layer and paint it with white or another color depending on the color scheme of the image and personal preferences. Next, you need to turn off the visibility of the “Image Background” layer and switch to the photo layer. Using the Elliptical Selection tool, you need to create an oval selection, after which you can return to the top layer. After this, the feathering tool is used to soften the edges of the selection. Finally, all that remains is to turn the visibility of the top layer back on and delete the selection. The whole procedure is quite simple and does not take much time.

So, the vignetting effect can be both an interesting creative tool and create some inconvenience for the photographer. In most cases, you don't have to worry too much about dark edges appearing around the edges of your photo image. This effect really catches your eye and is very critical only when using cropped lenses on full-frame cameras, where vignetting becomes unacceptable. In other cases, it does not interfere at all and can even add some artistry to the photograph, especially for portrait photographs. However, although sometimes the vignetting effect looks very attractive, it is worth going overboard and using a vignette in every second photo.

Vignetting photos

Greetings to all photographers!
Last time we started talking about processing RAW photographs. Today we continue this small series of lessons. So let's get started!

VIGNETING AND ITS CORRECTION

Vignetting (French vignette - splash) is a weakening of the light flow passing at an angle relative to the optical axis in the optical design of the lens. It leads to a gradual (gradient) decrease in image brightness from the center to the edges.

In simple terms, this is the effect of darkening the image at the edges of the frame. This optics flaw is perhaps the easiest to correct.

TYPES AND REASONS OF VIGNETING

Vignetting can be classified into two main categories:

1. Physical vignetting. Often it is not easy to correct; in severe cases, using a stamp in FS or cropping helps. It appears in the photo as a strong, sharp darkening - as a rule, only in the corners of the image. This may be due to the use of multiple filters, a lens hood (especially a non-genuine one), or other objects that physically block the light at the edges of the image.

2. Internal vignetting*. It's usually not that difficult to fix. It appears as a gradual (gradient) and often unnoticeable darkening from the center of the image to the edges. The reasons should be found in the settings of your lens and camera. As a rule, the most obvious reasons are: an open aperture, the use of zoom optics and wide-angle lenses when focusing on distant objects. Digital SLR cameras with a cropped matrix are less susceptible to vignetting, unlike full-frame ones.

The effect of internal vignetting is most often noticeable when using a full-frame camera paired with budget optics. For full-frame Nikon digital cameras, the vignetting effect always appears to a greater or lesser extent when using DX series lenses, which are designed for cameras with a cropped matrix - they are simpler in design, less materials are spent on their production, which is why they cost about one and a half times cheaper than their counterparts. full frame.

VIGNETING CORRECTION

Vignetting is usually corrected by applying a lens profile.

In most cases, this technique is enough to completely remove the effect.

If simply applying a lens profile is not enough, or you don’t have a profile, you can adjust vignetting correction using the slider. Note! Deep correction in some cases can increase the “noisiness” of the image at the edges.

The ability to correct vignetting is also available in the camera itself. For example, Canon this function called “Peripheral Illumination Correction”. You can enable it through the menu; just check the first tab - “peripheral lighting correction”. If you read the inscription “correction data available,” then your optics are recognized by the camera and everything will be all right. This function, as you probably understand, corrects vignetting depending on the lens installed. If the camera does not recognize your lens, the message “data not available” appears.

Nikon cameras , go to the menu and find the “vignette control” function. Connecting, as you can see, is not difficult, but the correction here does not work well enough, but it is universal. And one more unpleasant moment for owners of budget DSLRs - this function is only available in high-end cameras, such as the D700, D3 and the like, unlike Canon, where “peripheral illumination correction” is available in all new cameras, starting from the Canon 450D.

By the way, if you are wondering how vignetting is corrected in a camera, I’ll tell you. This additional signal amplification at the edges of the photosensitive matrix may result in a slight increase in noise level. When you need to turn it on and whether you need it at all is up to you to decide. Typically, using this feature when shooting with a wide-angle lens is more useful.

Yes, there is also a positive side to the vignetting effect - its insignificant effect, along with other techniques (the use of contrasting transitions, lighting accents, etc.) additionally concentrates the viewer’s attention on the model, especially if the person is in the center of the frame. In portrait photographs, many photographers like to manually add this effect, choosing the best density, gradation and area of darkness at their discretion.

In the third part of the material, I will introduce you to distortion, its varieties and ways to combat it.