Vignette

The vignette effect is basically the effect given to darken around the edges of a photo and to create a lighter focal point in the middle of a photo, usually used to highlight a person and draw attention in to them.

When creating this effect, I chose an image which already has a darkish background, with two people being the main focal point I wish to attract attention to. So, I placed this image in photoshop and used the feathering tool and put it on 20xp, I then used the Elliptical Marquee tool to select the place which I would like to be my focal point. I then clicked the "Select" option on the toolbar and then the "inverse" option. This made it select the outer area of the circle/oval I created, and following from that I edited the brightness by moving it down.

The feathering effect helped to make it blend in more as a gradient colour, to ensure that the outer line of the circle/oval wasn't too sharp, and then used the burn tool to darken the very outer corners of the image, to enhance the darker areas.