Tough Guy - The Photoshop: Professional Retouching and Compositing Tips, Tricks, and Techniques - page 369

Tip
Creating a vignette in this way is nondestructive, and you can reposition it at any
time. Simply click the levels adjustment layer mask in the Layers panel, and use
the Move tool to drag the vignette.
9. We're going to be adding more lighting effects in the upper corners, and it
wouldn't look good to have dark areas there too. To remove them and leave the
vignette only in the lower parts of the picture, click the layer mask and with a soft-
edged black brush paint on the picture in the upper-left and upper-right areas.
Adding Shadows
Adding shadows to the background is a great way to add drama.
1. Add a new blank layer to the top of the layer stack, and name it shadows . Press D
to set the foreground and background to their default of black and white. Choose
the Custom Shape tool from the toolbar, and choose the shape called Tile 2; it
looks like a square with diagonal lines ( Figure 7.14 ) .
Figure 7.14
2. In the settings at the top of the screen, make sure that the custom shape is set to
Pixels, Mode is Normal, Opacity is 100%, and the Anti Alias checkbox is selected
( Figure 7.15 ) . Then drag on the picture so that the shape fills the entire layer. Go
to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters and then to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and
increase the Radius to approximately 200 pixels.