The Use of Vignette and selective forcus

     Vignette and selective focus are the most overlooked and at the same time overworked software gadgets contained in the modern photographers tool box.  How is this possible?  Simple, most amateur photographers don't invest in a proper image editor for processing their photos so they have no idea that you can use masks and layers to create different effects on different areas of the photo.  Professionals on the other hand know how to used the mask and layer tools residing in the more sophisticated software programs, they just don't know when enough is enough, your's truly being no exception.  You see the use of selective vignette and focus is rather like a magic trick, if you do it correctly the audience is amazed at the result, but if your lovely young assistants foot is seen sticking out from under the table you have just made her disappear from then they are liable to assault you with vegetables and eggs.  Perhaps a more appropriate description would be to quote "Mae West" a sultry movie star from the early twentieth century when she said "Too much of a good thing can be taxing."  Certainly the same thing goes for photo effects, but if used judiciously selective vignette and focus can transform an ordinary photo in great photo.
     In order to use these techniques you will need to know how to apply slect, mask, and layer tools in an image editing software, there are free packages available such as "Gimp" or you can purchase programs from companies like Adobe, Corel or many other fine software publishers.  As I have stated numerous times before I use Corel Paintshop, and Photoshop Elements for my photo editing and that is what I will be using to demonstrate the use of the vignette, focus, and selection tool on some sample photos.  This photo of a P-51 Mustang that I took during an event at a Military Aviation Museum Show in 2015 will be our Guinea Pig and should do nicely to demonstrate how selective focus can improve a photo.  As you can see, everything in the photo is in relatively clear focus which makes for a nice but plain photo, but we can alter this by adding some depth of field.  This is accomplished by masking off certain portions of the photo while applying effect to the non-selected portions.  In order to do this we will have to use what is called a selection tool of.  Each software maker has a slightly different tool and process for selecting a portion of a photo but the end result is the same, and that is we want to segregate a portion of the photo that is either to be altered or left alone while we alter some other section, this is called masking and layering.

As you see here in the unaltered photo the plane, trees and grass are all in focus.

We will now open the photo in our editor and use the select tool to outline the Mustang.

After we select the area to remain unaltered we open the Depth of Field effect and apply it.

While I have the plane selected I will also ad some vibrancy to the colors.

And finally, we save the finished photo and it looks like this.

The plane is now in focus and the surrounding grass and trees are slightly blurred, but there is a major flaw in the photo as it is.  If you had set your SLR camera to obtain an aperture setting to blur the background while keeping your subject in focus the foreground would be in focus along with the plane, and in order to achieve that you would have to carefully plan out how and what you selected with the selection tool.  In this example I wanted the entire attention of the view to be centered on the P-51 and didn't bother with maintaining the foreground focus.  If wish for something more dramatic you might consider the use of the Vignette effect.

Applying the Vignette effect. 

Here you see the finished effect.

     So why is selective focus and vignette important to me if I when I sell my photos or videos?  Let's say you take a photo of someone's birthday celebration and the photo turns out great, but the subject isn't too thrilled by part of the picture.  By using the select tool to zero in on a specific area and then applying selective focus or vignette we can tweak the image so that the offensive portion of the photo is not visible.  A sample of this would be the following photos of the lovely and still hot, Brooke Shields at her 50th birthday party. 

Before Enhancement 

After Enhancement

     So, the moral of the story is, being able to offer your clients tools with which you can improve their appearance or alter the surroundings the more valuable you will become to your clients.