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Vignette

Shade the frame edges, or cut them away so the layers below show through

A vignette is the gentle darkening around the edges of a photograph — an accident of old lenses that photographers liked enough to keep, because it quietly pulls your eye to the middle. Here it can also do the opposite of darkening: instead of shading the edges it can *remove* them, so whatever is underneath carries on uninterrupted. That is how a shaft of light gets its shape — the light itself fills the whole frame, and a soft oval decides which part of it you're allowed to see.