Pixiq

There is an old technique that can quickly take your images up a notch, edge burning. Ansel Adams talked about this quite a lot in his classic book, The Print (which is still in print and a superb book for photographers working with Lightroom and Photoshop -- just ignore the chemistry stuff).

Edge burning is very simple thing you can do to any digital photo and it will give your photo a great dimensional quality and enhance your composition. By darkening the edges of your photo (a traditional darkroom technique), you keep the viewer's eyes on your subject and your composition. And you can do this subtly or dramatically depending on your needs for the photo. Notice that the effect is not overdone for this photo of a scene in the Santa Monica Mountains of California, yet it makes the first image look richer and helps define the composition better. 

This is really easy to do with Lightroom and Camera Raw -- use Post Crop Vignetting in Effects. There are four controls. Over adjust the first one, Amount, to see the effect, then tweak the other controls while you can see the effect so strongly. Then back off Amount to where it looks good (this will depend on the photo and your taste).

You can see how edge darkening in this photo helps emphasize the face of the child and keeps the viewers' eyes from drifting off to the bright edges.

Edge darkening is also fairly easy to do in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, but it is not a simple set of sliders like Lightroom and Camera Raw. Make a big, circular selection around the outside of the photo, then invert the selection so that only the outside part of the photo is selected (use Inverse in the Select menu).

Now add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (yes, Brightness/Contrast -- it works well for this purpose). You will automatically get a layer mask based on your selection -- you don't have to know anything about layer masks to use this. 

Move the Brightness slider to the left to darken the photo. There will be an ugly edge. Go to the Filter menu and choose Blur, then Gaussian blur. Use a big blur number until that ugly edge disappears.

Now adjust the Brightness slider until the photo looks good. Click the eye icon for the layer on and off to see the effect. 

You may have to brighten the original photo some when you do this (true for Photoshop, Lightroom and Camera Raw). Also, when you are done, you can keep the layer or flatten the photo and save it as a new version of your file. Flatten the image using the Layer menu. 

Ever feel like giving up on the browns of nature in fall and winter? Check out some ideas on working with browns on my blog at www.natureandphotography.com.