Apply a very wide vignette that acts more like a soft light, to your regular photos.

1. Open the photo to which you want to apply a burned-in edge effect. Just so you know, what we’re doing here is focusing attention through the use of lightwe’re burning in all the edges of the photo (not just the corners, like lens vignetting), which leaves the visual focus in the center of the image.

2. Go to the Layers palette and add a new layer by clicking on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the palette. Press the letter D to set your Foreground color to black, and then fill your new layer with black by pressing Alt-Backspace (MAC: Option-Delete).

3. Press M to get the Rectangular Marquee tool and drag a selection about 1′ inside the edges of your photo. Then, to greatly soften the edges of your selection, go under the Select menu and choose Feather. When the dialog appears, enter 50 pixels for a low-res photo (or 170 pixels for a high-res, 300-ppi photo), and click OK.

4. Now that your edges have been softened, all you have to do is press Delete key and you’ll knock a soft hole out of your black layer, revealing the photo on the Background layer beneath it. Now press Ctrl+D (MAC:Command-D) to deselect.

Note: If the edges seem too dark, you can go to the Layers palette and lower the Opacity of your black layer (in the example shown here, I lowered the Opacity to around 80%).