What it does
Fades the image toward a colour at the edges of the frame, with an adjustable size, softness, and shape.
Real vignetting is built into optics. Light entering a lens at an angle has a smaller effective aperture to pass through than light entering straight on, so every lens darkens toward the corners, and wide apertures, cheap glass, and stacked filters make it worse. Darkroom printers turned the defect into technique by burning in the edges of a print by hand, holding light back from the center, and a century of portraiture trained everyone to read shaded corners as intimacy rather than error.
The craft of a digital vignette is mostly in the shape. The giveaway of a lazy one is a fixed circle stamped onto the frame regardless of its proportions, leaving dead corners on a widescreen shot. A vignette that follows the composition stretches with it: on a wide frame the falloff becomes a wide ellipse, and the shape can relax further toward a rounded rectangle that hugs the frame itself, which reads as printed borders and projected film gates do. The center can also move, so the pool of light sits on the subject instead of the geometric middle.
And a vignette does not have to darken. Fading the edges toward white or a paper tone produces the matte fade of old prints and lookbooks; a tinted vignette shifts the mood of a grade from the outside in. Softness runs the whole range from an imperceptible gradient that just settles the frame to a hard-edged shape that reads as a spotlight or a porthole, a graphic device rather than a correction. On video the falloff is anchored to the frame, so it holds perfectly steady while the content moves through it.
Signature looks
Darkroom portrait
A soft black falloff easing in from the corners, the burned-in edge of a printed portrait. Felt more than seen.
Matte fade
Edges lifting toward paper white instead of black, the washed border of an old print or a lookbook page.
Hard spotlight
A tight, crisp-edged pool of light with the falloff pulled off-center onto the subject. Theatrical, deliberate, graphic.
Try it on your own footage
This effect runs live in the Modulate editor, free with no signup — or start from the free tool page for a guided setup.
Common questions
What is a vignette effect?
A vignette is a gradual shading of an image toward its edges and corners, usually darkening them, so the center appears brighter by contrast. It imitates the natural light falloff of camera lenses and is one of the oldest framing devices in photography: the eye settles where the light is.
Why do photos have natural vignetting?
Light that enters a lens at an angle passes through a smaller effective opening than light entering head-on, so brightness falls off toward the corners of the image circle. Wide apertures amplify it, and lens hoods, filter stacks, and adapters can add mechanical vignetting by physically clipping the light path. Modern cameras quietly correct much of it, which is partly why adding it back reads as filmic.
Does a vignette have to be black?
No. Black is the classic choice because it mimics lens falloff, but fading the edges toward white gives the matte, faded-print look, and a colored vignette tints the mood of the frame from the outside in. The mechanism is the same in every case: the image blends toward one color as it approaches the edges.
How strong should a vignette be?
The colorist rule of thumb is that a corrective vignette should be felt, not seen: enough to settle the frame and lift the subject, not enough that anyone notices an oval. Strong, hard-edged vignettes are a different tool entirely, a deliberate graphic gesture like a spotlight, and they work precisely because they are obvious.
Can you add a vignette to video?
Yes, and it is one of the most stable effects there is, because the shading is anchored to the frame rather than the content: the falloff holds still while the footage moves through it. In Modulate the Vignette effect runs live on images and video, follows the composition’s shape, and stacks naturally with grain and color adjustments in the editor.
Related effects
Film grain effect
Adds real film grain, fine or heavy, in color or black and white, with presets for classic stocks like 35mm, 16mm, and Super 8.
Gradient map
Recolors the image by mapping its dark and light areas onto a gradient you design.
Lens blur
Blurs like a real camera lens, with out-of-focus highlights blooming into soft bokeh shapes.
Levels adjustment
Adjusts brightness and contrast by setting new black, white, and midtone points.