Picasa Tip: Use Vignette for that Finishing Touch

Since the good folks at Picasa gave us 2 more tabs of editing features, it takes me longer to fix my pictures because I like to play with them all!  See prior articles on HDRish, Neon, etc.  The last tab is where you’ll find several different framing options, all of which will give your pictures a professional finish.  In this article I want to show you the simplest type of frame, and that is Vignette.  With a single click, you can take away the stark edges of your photo and focus your viewer on the center content.  It simply fades the edges to black … vignette.  Giving it a professional look without a specific frame.  I tend to use it more on simple nature shots since rarely is there anything on the edges of the picture that I care about.

To use Vignette, first double-click on your picture to bring up all the editing tools at the left.  Select the 5th and last tab of tools, and you’ll see Vignette on end of the first row.  Just click it, then click apply to get the basic Vignette feature as shown in image #2 below.

1. Original Photo	2. One click on Vignette
3. Vignette with Max Size and Strength	4. Vignette, with green color

Image # 3 was created by dragging the sliders to the right for size and strength.  And, image #4 clicked on Vignette color and then clicked on a dark portion of the leaf in the picture itself.  That set the vignette color to green.

You can even use Vignette to fade out to white if you want to give your image a dreamy quality, or make it blend into a document’s background.

And you can use Vignette multiple times.  In the following picture I first added the white Vignette, then a green one.

Or use a red vignette then a black one on this autumn leaf:

Ok, you get the idea!  Now go play.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website.  There are lots of tutorial videos on editing your pictures with Picasa’s tools.  The first 3 are free for all to view.  To see all of them, you need a Geeks On Tour membership.  It’s only $7/mo or $58/yearly.  Join Today!