An Effect...

A

adoyle

Active member
I'd like to know how to do a soft vignetting around the edges of a clip..if it's possible.
Anyone know?
 
You could use a cookie cutter, circle or oval, and then feather it in. You can also use a video track above with a color gradient while using the overlay mode. Choose the elliptical white to black and alter the numbers inside to taste.
Jgastelb
 
I find that I get the best results by authoring them in photoshop .. with a nice soft fall off exactly as I want it to look. The middle is 255,255,255 (white), falling off in a nice elipse and darkest in the corners. Try dragging an elipse shape, filling it with colour, then blurring it very heavily with gaussian blur. It doesn't even have to be perfectly centred, of course. Then change the fall-off response with Curves, and make sure that the middle clamps at least a bit (is pure white). Add a very small amount of noise to "dither" the 8bit banding, then export to TGA ... Drag into vegas, add to a new layer at the top, and set to Mask. Lower opacity of layer as required.

You may find that you get a more pleasing effect by setting your white-point in photoshop to 128 (rather than 255), so that the very centre of your image is pure mid grey instead of white ... and then setting the blend mode to Overlay rather than Multiply. You get a slightly different blend response this way.

I have quite a library of vignettes and other subtle light-play effects which I composite on in this way.
 
One thing to remember, though, that when using the cookie cutter, border, or gradient (as a compositing mask), whatever is in the tracks underneath your footage will show through the vignette areas.
 
Then the best option would be the photoshop route. Just overlay an image which acts as the mask. Its the best option. In fact like Epsideum says....photoshop images used for these kind of things and for text effects etc are much better when done using photoshop files. The direct .PSD file can be used within vegas.
 
Well, you can, in Vegas, create a gradient which is transparent in the middle and black along the edges and use it as an overaly, just like you would the PS file. In that case, you wouldn't use it as a compositing mask -- you'd just have it in the track above.
 
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