Know how those old cheezy Senior Portraits looked? Same thing with Church directories and bad mass-produced family portraits?




So let's just say you want to achieve that effect, which is called a Vignette. Here's how.


First, find the pic. I'm using one from a request from thediceman.



Whee. Good times.

Now, crop it down to a manageable size using the Crop tool (C)



Create a new Layer above the original picture and name it Vignette.

Next, use the Elliptical Marquee tool (M). On the toolbar up top, choose to feather the selection. I feathered this one 20 pixels. It depends on the picture, so you'll just have to play with it and use your best judgement.



Remember with any of the Marquee tools, you can use SHIFT to constrain the shape to a square or circle. Moreso than that, you can hit the SPACEBAR while dragging your marquee to move the marquee around. This will eliminate a lot of making new marquees if you screw up placing it to begin with. Try dragging a new marquee and while you're in the process of doing it, press and hold the SPACEBAR and move your mouse around. You'll see what I mean.


Once the Marquee is in place (and make sure the new Vignette layer is active by clicking on it), invert your selection by clicking (Select -> Inverse) (or applicable keyboard shortcut). This selects all the area around the target area.



Now you're going to fill that target area with a color of your choice. Press Edit -> Fill and choose either white, or select a Color as your foreground and click OK.



This fills the outer feathered area with color on a separate layer. Now you can do as you wish with either layer and not affect the other.