Education/Inspiration
John Paul Caponigro Photo Tip: Test for Vignetting
By John Paul Caponigro
May 5, 2007

Vignetting is

In photography, vignetting is a reduction in brightness in the periphery of an image (corners and edges). Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, a great majority of photographs contain vingetting. Darkening the corners and edges of an image directs the viewer’s attention towards the center of the image. When it becomes pronounced it may become distracting or produce an unnatural appearance.

By default, no adjustment is made; 0 – 0.

Amount lightens corners and edges; 100 – 0

There are three types of vignetting; mechanical, optical, and pixel.

Optical vignetting is produced by light falloff inherent in lens design. Wide angle lenses and lenses used in rangefinder and compact cameras are more prone to vignetting than longer lenses and retrofocus lenses used in SLR cameras. Like mechanical vignetting, optical vignetting can be reduced by using smaller apertures.

Pixel vignetting only affects digital cameras and is a biproduct of the physical depth of photon wells that capture light. As the angle of light that enters a well becomes more oblique pixel vignetting increases. Most digital cameras incorporate in-camera file post-processing routines to compensate for both pixel and optical vignetting.

Midpoint spreads the effect towards the center; 100 – 50.

Upper and lower limits apply to the effects both sliders can achieve; 100 – 100.

Vignetting is at it’s worst when lenses are focused at infinity. At close focus the field of view decreases and the image circle increases. The vignetted area is pushed outwards with the image circle and when the focus is close enough the optical or mechanical vignetting will be outside the frame. (Optical vignetting determines the size of the image circle.)




How to adjust vignetting with RAW converters

You can easily adjust the amount of vignetting an image contains in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Camera RAW, or Adobe Lightroom.

When removing vignetting, the sliders can be used to produce the most uniform appearance.

Save Settings in Photoshop for future use.

To get the best results using Lens Vignetting adjustments you need to strike an optimum balance between the Amount (lightens corners and edges) and Midpoint (spreads the effect towards center) sliders. If Amount is set to 0, Midpoint will become inactive; no correction is made. Drag the Amount slider to the right to lighten and to the left to darken. The Midpoint slider let’s you control how much that adjustment spreads towards the center of the image; 100 targets the corners aggressively, while 0 extends the adjustment well into the center of the image.



Classically, when removing vignetting, the sliders are used to produce the most uniform appearance. Target the corners and edges. Avoid producing visible circles inside the edges.

With RAW converters, there are upper and lower limits you cannot exceed and the shape of the effect is fixed. You can exceed the limits of RAW converters and adjust the shape of the effect using Adobe Photoshop. These adjustments can be either in addition to or in lieu of RAW converter adjustments.

You can save custom settings for future use. In ACR 3 go to the Presets tab and use the submenu to select Save Settings. In the Save Settings window use the drop down menu to change All Settings to Lens Corrections and uncheck Chromatic Aberration. Give each setting an appropriate title. Within each tab you can load a custom setting or you can recall a settings in the Presets tab.

Vignetting Tests

You can test how much vignetting a lens produces and create standard corrections for images produced with it.

Presets in Lightroom can be save for future recall.

Specific fields can be saved and later combined with other saved presets.