Add a Vignette to a Photo
The corner darkening old lenses could not avoid, on a slider. Everything else about your photo stays where it was.
No photo? Try a sample
Presets in this editor
iPhone 4
Soft edges, gentle grain, slightly warm 2010s smartphone vibe.
Grain 38 · Softness 32 · Vignette 18
Warm Digicam
Golden-hour point-and-shoot warmth with punchy colors.
Grain 28 · Softness 18 · Warmth 66
Cool CCD
Cleaner, slightly cool vintage sensor feel (subtle green/cyan lean).
Grain 22 · Softness 14 · Aberration 12
Flash Pop
Harsh highlights + glow like a built-in flash at night.
Bloom 20 · Grain 18 · Contrast 60
Soft Nostalgia
Dreamy, faded, warm — heavy softness + bloom for a nostalgic vibe.
Softness 48 · Grain 30 · Bloom 26
2000s Y2K
Warm, faded early-digicam color with soft grain and a gentle vignette.
Grain 30 · Fade 18 · Softness 16
Disposable Flash
Hard close-flash glow, warm grain, casual single-use snapshot energy.
Grain 26 · Bloom 24 · Softness 12
Huji-Style
Warm flashed glow with grain, made for the corner date stamp.
Grain 29 · Softness 14 · Bloom 14
Dazz-Style
Cool CCD glow with extra bloom and old-sensor color fringe.
Grain 22 · Bloom 14 · Aberration 13
Kodak Gold
Golden film warmth with soft skin tones and fine grain.
Grain 22 · Warmth 63 · Softness 12
35mm Film
Fine grain and restrained, true-to-life analog color.
Grain 25 · Softness 14 · Vignette 8
Film Grain
Fine, even film texture over otherwise natural color.
Grain 35 · Softness 10 · Fade 10
Lomo Punch
Dark toy-camera vignette with loud, punchy color.
Vignette 30 · Grain 23 · Saturation 62
Vintage Fade
Old-print warmth with lifted blacks and darkened corners.
Grain 28 · Fade 21 · Softness 20
Polaroid
Washed instant-film fade with gentle warmth and a soft glow.
Softness 22 · Fade 21 · Vignette 20
Frequently Asked Questions
A gradual darkening towards the corners and edges, leaving the middle brighter. Old lenses produced it by accident because they could not carry light evenly to the corners of the frame, and photographers kept adding it on purpose afterwards because it quietly pulls the eye to the centre of the picture.
If a viewer notices the vignette before they notice the subject, it is too strong. For reference, the presets on this site run from 6 to 30 on a 0-100 scale: 35mm Film uses 8, Vintage Fade 20, and Lomo Punch, the heaviest, 30. Anything past about 40 stops reading as a lens and starts reading as an effect.
Nothing black is painted over the photo. The darkening is a multiplier, so at the maximum setting a corner of a normally proportioned photo keeps roughly thirty percent of the brightness it already had, and the falloff eases in about a fifth of the way out from the centre rather than starting at a hard edge. A corner that was already very dark will therefore land at or near black — that is its own tone being scaled down, not an overlay.
When the subject is near a corner, because you will be darkening the thing you want people to look at. Also on images that will be cropped later, since the darkening will end up off-centre, and on anything documentary, where a vignette reads as styling.
Free, no account, no watermark. The photo is processed by your own browser and never sent anywhere, which is also why it still works with the tab offline once the page has loaded.
Then this is not the page you want, and it is quicker to say so. This is a browser tool that applies a vignette directly. If you specifically need the Photoshop route, that is a Lens Correction filter or a radial gradient on a mask, and Adobe documents both.
About This Tool
A vignette is the gradual darkening you get towards the corners of a frame. Early lenses produced it by accident, because they could not carry light evenly all the way out, and photographers have been adding it deliberately ever since for the reason it works: a darker edge makes the eye settle in the middle without the viewer noticing they have been steered.
This page does that one thing. Load a photo and the vignette slider opens at 25, which is a little stronger than the Vintage Fade preset uses and a little softer than Lomo Punch, the heaviest on the site. Nothing else is touched, because someone who asked for a vignette has not asked to have their colours warmed or their grain raised.
The falloff is deliberately gentle. Darkening begins roughly a fifth of the way out from the centre and increases smoothly towards the corners, and even at the maximum setting a corner of a normally proportioned photo keeps around thirty percent of the brightness it already had. That is closer to how a real lens behaves, and it is why the effect survives at settings where a hard-edged one would look like a badly cut mask.
The honest rule for how far to go: if the vignette is the first thing someone notices, it has gone too far. Everything runs in your browser, free, with no account and no watermark, and the photo is never uploaded.
Why darker corners make a photo better
It started as a fault. Early lenses could not carry light evenly to the edge of the frame, so the corners came out darker whether the photographer wanted it or not. Wide apertures made it worse, and cheap lenses made it worse still, which is why the effect is so strongly associated with old and inexpensive cameras.
It survived because it turned out to be useful. The eye is drawn to the brightest part of an image, so darkening the edges settles attention in the middle without anyone consciously noticing they have been directed. Done gently it does not read as an effect at all; it reads as the photo simply being better composed than it is.
How far to push the slider
The editor opens at 25. These are the bands either side of it, with the values the presets on this site actually use, so you can judge against something real rather than against a description.
| Setting | Reads as | Used by |
|---|---|---|
| 6 to 10 | Almost subliminal. You would not name it if asked. | Film Grain 6, 35mm Film 8, Cool CCD 10 |
| 12 to 20 | Noticeable if you look for it. The usual working range. | Warm Digicam 12, 2000s Y2K 16, Vintage Fade 20 |
| 22 to 30 | Clearly a choice. Toy-camera territory. | Soft Nostalgia 22, Lomo Punch 30 |
| 40 and up | An effect rather than a lens. Rarely what you wanted. | No preset on this site goes here |
Two details of how it is drawn, since they explain why it holds up at higher settings than you might expect. The darkening starts about a fifth of the way out from the centre rather than at a hard line, and it is applied as a multiplier rather than a fade towards black, so on a normally proportioned photo even the maximum leaves the corners at roughly thirty percent of the brightness they already had.
Four times not to add one
A vignette is close to free on most photos, which is why it gets applied to all of them. These are the cases where it costs you something.
You will be darkening the exact thing you want people to look at. Either recompose, or accept that the vignette is working against you rather than for you.
A vignette is centred on the frame it was applied to. Crop afterwards and the dark area ends up lopsided, which looks like a mistake rather than a decision. Crop first, then vignette.
On a product shot, a record photo or anything meant to be believed, a vignette reads as styling and quietly undermines the claim that you are just showing what was there.
There is nothing left to darken, so the slider does very little until suddenly the corners block up entirely. Contrast usually serves better here.
Where a vignette usually ends up going
Rarely on its own. Corner darkening is one ingredient of the look people mean when they say a photo feels old, alongside warmth, lifted blacks, grain and a little softness. If the vignette is the first step rather than the whole job, how to make a photo look old covers the other four and how far to take each. For the heaviest vignette on the site applied as part of a whole look, that is the lomo filter.
If you came here for the Photoshop method
A good share of people searching this want the steps in Photoshop specifically, and this page cannot give them. What is here is a browser tool that applies the vignette directly, which is faster if you have no strong feelings about the software. If you do need the Photoshop route, it is the Lens Correction filter or a radial gradient on a layer mask, and Adobe's own documentation is the right place for it rather than a second-hand account here.
Also on this site
There are also the date stamp tool and the black and white converter, listed together on the tools page. If you would rather apply a finished look in one step than set anything yourself, that is what the filters are for.