Create vignette in Gimp - how it works

Vignettes darken the edge of a photo and thus direct the view into the center of the picture. This practical tip shows how you can easily reproduce such an effect in Gimp.

Create a vignette in Gimp - step by step

1. Open a photo in Gimp that you want to edit.
2. Right click in the Layer tool and create a new layer. Select "Transparent" as the filling.
3. In our example, the vignette is created using a color gradient. To do this, set the foreground color to black and switch to the gradient tool on the left.
4. Here you select the "VG to Transparent" process. Also click the blue double arrow to change the direction of the gradient.
5. Set the shape of the gradient to "circular".
6. Now move the mouse pointer into the middle of the picture. From there, hold the mouse button down and drag a gradient to the edge.
7. Gimp then creates a circular gradient on the new layer. Since the vignette effect is still quite strong, lower the layer opacity. A value between 20 and 30 percent makes sense here.

In the next practical tip, we will show how you can use Gimp to blur the background of an image.