Tutorial: Simple Photoshop Vignette

Here is an easy-peasy way to vignette a photo by darkening it's corners using a simple mask. For this tutorial, I'm using a photo of two of my friends--both MICA grads--who attended the 2012 MICA graduation carrying inspirational signs to encourage the new grads.

Open your image in photoshop. In the layers panel double-click the image to unlock it

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool and drag a marquee from the upper-left to the lower-right of your image. This will select most of the image except for the 4 corners

From top menu choose Select > Inverse to choose the outer corners of your image

Press “Q” or click on the Select the Edit in Standard Mode mask from your tools panel

Go to Filters for your top menu and select Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set your radius to between  50 and 60px (57px used here). Hit OK

Press “Q” again

Select Image  > Adjustments  > Levels and with your RGB channel selected, use the light Output to create the darkened edges on your photo.

Here’s what I finished with:

thanks Zach and Street