Or 4 or more controle lines , gradient filter.
Put them outside the image frame and use the gradient slider to control the effect.
Then use the blur function to add vignetting.
You can use 6 to get an oval effect on a 16:9 framing
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Just upgraded to version 9 of PL… The simple ability to add a vignette is still noticably absent… And this is 2026.
As to purchasing Filmpack just for this basic feature, it’s a completely laughable idea. Heck, not only is the price sky high, but they don’t even give you the bundle rebate, or rebate of any kind, if you already own Photolab.
Not to mention having to maintain 2 softwares licenses, at which point the Adobe option become less expensive. Probably the way I’ll go come upgrade time.
The problem is that control point are pretty awful in PL. For one thing, contrary to Lightroom, they can only be round, you can’t even make them oval. Then they are incredibly fiddly to use, you can’t center them on an image automatically for example. In short, it kinda work, but there are plenty of things I’d rather be doing than doing it this way, including, but not reserved to, sawing off my own feet.
Control Points are not designed to create vignettes! Control Points are incredibly useful for adjusting parts of an image without being noticed as a local correction. CPs also sample the image where you add them and make adjustments based on chroma and Luna values sampled and your input to those values.
If your want to add vignettes then get Film Pack.
Control points may not have been intended for vignetting, but using them as described creates a very soft, “invisible” vignette, more akin to the “Darken/Lighten Center” effect in Nik ColorEfex Pro than FilmPack’s Creative Vignetting plug-in.
However, I would first try disabling vignetting correction instead of complaining about the lack of a vignetting tool …
One could discuss integrating all FilmPack features that aren’t pure film simulations into PhotoLab (at a slightly higher price). However, DxO hasn’t made this decision.
I’m sorry but I am just going to have to jump in here.
When I escaped Adobe, I bought the whole bundle - PL1, FP and VP, all in one go. As subsequent versions were released, I was able to benefit from upgrade pricing and always have the complete suite.
If I had needed to upgrade all three parts this year, it would have only cost me €269,97. Although, if I’d taken advantage of the Black Friday deal, if I remember rightly, it was about 20% less than that.
I could not work without FilmPack’s amazing Fine Contrast sliders and there are a few more tools that, once you discover them, you’ll wonder why you didn’t buy FP before.
As to price, DxO’s tools are professional level photo editing tools, designed for top quality results. They are not generic image manipulation tools. When you want a B&W image, you can choose genuine film emulations, not just a generic desaturation. I use Fuji Acros 100 film in my LF film camera and I can get exactly the same finish from the FP emulation.
And a lot of folks forget that DxO provide hand-crafted camera and lens modules for correcting so many optical faults, along with world class denoising that means I can shoot at 25,000 ISO and squeaky clean prints.
Oh, and no I don’t get paid a cent for promoting DxO. I just know an excellent tool when I see one.
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If I had needed to upgrade all three parts this year, it would have only cost me €269,97.
Which is way, way, way more than a Lightroom license. Heck, it’s even more than LR+PS, and one cannot argue that the Photoshop+Lightroom combination offers an universe of capabilities that PL, even loaded to the tilt, cannot remotely touch.
Fact is, vignette functionality has nothing to do with film, it has everything to do with lens; I can’t even figure out why it’s in a film simulation add-on in the first place.
It’s also a functionality that is included in every other raw editor on the planet, which qualify it as basic function, not an expensive add-on.
Frankly, forcing users to buy an expensive add-on just to get basic functionality is pure evil. So, with all that in mind, next upgrade round I’m going back to Adobe, I’m done with this company.
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I think you misunderstood that PhotoLab’s primary goal is to provide the best possible image quality, not to degrade it (sorry, but adding vignetting is degradation in the technical sense).
In your understanding of vignetting, it’s related to the lens. That’s correct… except that PhotoLab corrects the effects of vignetting. Want to get back to what your lens looks like? Disable vignetting correction! I don’t think your lens allows you to add vignetting on top of the original.
After that, you might want to make creative additions, and for that, you can use FilmPack… It’s another way to work with the image.
I don’t think your assumption about the purpose of PhotoLab is correct and your assumption that adding a vignette is degrading the image is not really supportable either. It is an artistic choice and isn’t appreciably different from blurring to create bokeh or isolating a subject using a mask. Just because it is not an artistic choice you might not want to make doesn’t mean it isn’t a legitimate choice someone else might make.
And @floatingby is correct, a vignette tool that adds an artistic vignette is a fundamental tool in almost every photo editing app. Even something as basic as Apple Photos has it.
For PhotoLab not to have a fully functioning vignette tool is either an oversight on their part or an intentional attempt to push purchases of film pack. PhotoLab is incomplete without it. Its just that simple.