Creating an Elliptical Vignette in GIMP

[Mike Buckley]

This tutorial is for anyone as dumb as me (probably not possible) who might have had as difficult a time as I had (also probably not possible) at figuring out how to create an elliptical vignette in GIMP. Thanks to Donald and Allan for helping me.

If you know of a way to improve upon this tutorial, please don't keep it a secret!

EDIT: The following workflow has been dramatically shortened and improved, thanks to a suggestion made by Remco.

1) Select the foreground color using the color picker or whatever method you want to use.
2) Create a new layer in transparency mode.
3) Click the Ellipse Select Tool and draw the ellipse in the image.
4) Select >> Invert
5) Select >> Feather >> Input the number of pixels to be feathered (about 75 – 250)
6) Edit >> Fill with FG Color
7) Lower the opacity of the new layer as desired.
8) If the feathering is not what you want, repeatedly use the top Undue command in the Edit menu to until the feathering step is removed. Then repeat Steps 6 through 8. Otherwise, continue with the next step.
9) Merge Down the layer and Export the file.

NOTE: Instead of creating a color vignette as described above, you could use a Gaussian blur or whatever effect you want to apply to the selected area of the image. I haven't studied the details of doing that, but it does seem clear to me that the Brushes, Patterns and Gradients dialogs can be used to do that.

[Donald]

Well done Mike. That's what determination and tenacity in terms of finding the solution is all about.

I'm certainly going to save this text for easy access in the future - both fro my own reference, but also to be able to paste up the next time someone asks the question ...... as they surely will.

[revi]

Wouldn't it work better when you feather the selection before applying the colour you want (i.e.put
step 6 before step 5)? Iirc, feathering works on the active selection, and will cause a transparency
gradient to be applied on modifications applied after the feathering.

As an alternative, you could try to remove the selection and blur the vignette layer.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks so much, Remco! Your suggestion about switching Steps 5 and 6 results in multiple improvements. The most important one is that the feathering is displayed without having to create a new window. Also, if the feathering is not as you want it, you need to revert only to two previous steps in the workflow.

Please review the revised workflow provided in the first post and maybe you can come up with another improvement.