How do ‘Motivated Vignettes’ improve your color grading?

They are indeed addictive, but I sometimes inadvertently muddy the light source by putting a vignette over it. When I think intentionally, I use the vignette to augment the directionality of the light, like Cullen did in his example by shifting it to the right.  So the vignette becomes a way to manage the fill lighting by adding, subtracting, bending or cheating it a bit to optimize and enhance the intent of the image.

I have personal  technique to create more depth on image with a vignette,

I create black color generator node  below layer mixer then I make my shape mask by vignetting what surround my subject than I put the blend mode to Softlight then I reduce the key output gain of color-generator node to 10%-15% depends on your taste

I got pleasing result always

My first reason to use a vignette was if I wanted to mimic a more ‘filmic’ look of the fall off of a camera lens. Accurately reproducing that kind of optical fall off with your controls (not just lowering the gain, I prefer to use gamma more) is something I’m never quite sure about?

It seems that this particular insight is aimed toward light shaping using vignettes. Lens vignettes can be quite organic if not pushed too hard. But the idea of shifting the viewer eyes to important things in a frame, the subliminal and subtlety are in my opinion the key. Especially if someone tracks it on a moving camera, there isn’t many occasions where real people have a follow spot operator in their kitchen.
So I think that using the vignettes to help sell the story is something that maybe should be done more if the camera work is not adequate. There are time considerations as well if this was done on all frames.
As far as the example here, the first consideration in my opinion should be looking at where the light is entering the frame. I think with such a strong light on the cupboards and the counter in front of what looks like a window – that maybe that should be dealt with first to lessen the light ratio , then add the vignette to make the view look at the person.

Thanks for your insights, Jim! Great ideas as usual!

Another great topic. Thanks, Cullen.

My preference is to use power windows to make the lighting mimic how light naturally falls off. Obviously, this has to be within the creative context of the story.

Using windows and subtle luminance tweaks can really make an image sing. I tend to dial in the contrast and ratios well before looking at colour separation. I guess what I’m really trying to do is to create an image that feels observed and not captured.