Add a Vignette to an Image

Add a vignette to a photo, in your browser

Pick an image and a strength — a vignette is applied with ffmpeg, entirely in your browser. A vignette darkens the image gradually toward the edges and corners, pulling the viewer's eye to the middle of the frame; it's the classic finishing touch for portraits, product shots, and moody landscapes. Switch Mode to lighten to brighten the edges instead for a faded, hazy border, or pick a Vignette color (a name like sepia or hex like #1A2B3C) to fade the edges toward any tint — white for an airy high-key border, sepia for a vintage look, or a brand color for thumbnails. Under the hood the friendly Strength value (0–100) is mapped onto the ffmpeg vignette filter's angle — the default 40 lands exactly on the filter's classic default, and you never have to think in radians.

Worked example

Upload portrait.jpg and leave Strength at 40 — the result keeps the same dimensions, the face in the middle stays at full brightness, and the corners fall off softly. In numbers: on a plain white test image, strength 40 leaves the center at RGB 255 while the far corners drop to roughly RGB 110; at strength 80 the corners are nearly black (about RGB 3), and at 100 they reach pure black. With Vignette color #B08050 and strength 100, the corners land exactly on RGB (176,128,80) while the center stays untouched. If your subject sits on the left third, set Center X to 25 — the bright spot follows the subject and the right side darkens more.

Picking a strength

• 15–30 — barely-there edge falloff; adds depth without being noticed.
• 35–55 — the classic photographic vignette; the default 40 sits here.
• 60–85 — dramatic, moody edges for portraits and posters.
• 90–100 — corners go fully to the vignette color (black by default, white in lighten mode); a spotlight/tunnel effect rather than a subtle finish.

Picking a color

• black (default) — the classic lens vignette; uses the plain filter.
• white / ivory — an airy, high-key fade for weddings, products, and lifestyle shots (similar in spirit to lighten mode, but fades toward the exact color instead of amplifying brightness).
• sepia / brown — vintage, old-photo warmth.
• navy / #1A2B3C — subtle cinematic teal-dark edges.
• Any hex works: #RGB shorthand (#A52 = #AA5522) or #RRGGBB. Colors apply in darken mode; lighten always brightens toward white and is rejected with a hint if you combine it with a color.

Limits and edge cases

• Input files up to 8 MiB; any image format ffmpeg can decode works (PNG, JPEG, WebP, BMP, GIF, …). The output keeps the input's exact dimensions — nothing is cropped or resized.
• Output format keep (default) keeps the input format; png, jpg or webp convert. Converting takes a single still frame, so an animated GIF keeps only its first frame — use keep to stay animated. jpg output is pinned to a high-quality encode (ffmpeg -q:v 2).
• Strength 0 is valid and returns the image unchanged; values outside 0–100 (for strength or the two center fields) are rejected with the expected range named.
• The vignette is elliptical and follows the image's aspect ratio. You can move its center and pick its color, but its reach and softness aren't separately adjustable — ffmpeg's vignette filter couples both into the one strength knob, and a separate size/feather mask would be too slow to compute per-pixel in browser wasm for large photos.
• Transparency is not preserved: processing happens in YUV or opaque planar RGB, so a transparent PNG comes back fully opaque.
• Animated GIFs are processed frame by frame and stay animated (with format keep).

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