darkmatter

Hi, newbie here... I'm trying to figure out how to round out the 90 degree edges of any square/rectangle area. I've tried the feather function but that just fades teh edges... help?

Thank you.

Vince

Welles

Hi darkmatter,

The most simple way is to use the Rounded Rectangle Tool, hiding in the tool palette under the Custom Shape Tool. Depending on what you want you could create a shape layer, move it into place, command click on the layer to create a selection and go from there. You could just use the tool to draw a path and then have at it. What are you trying to accomplish exactly (if I haven?t provided a good enough answer.) \:]

darkmatter

Thanks for the input... I've got 2 rectangles that are positioned and sized exactly where I want them and I just need to round the edges, that's it. I know I could accomplish round edges by creating new objects and whatnot but I'm afraid I'd lose my other attributes.

Vince

darkmatter

OK, I think I figured it out...

I selected both objects, then used Select>Modify>Smooth, then inverted the selection and voila!

Thanks!

Vince

Welles

Good for you! :}

darkmatter

Forgot to add after inverting the selection... delete!

tfoster

I did some fiddling with the Smooth function and thought I'd report in. At first I thought that would be a great tip-I too had first thought of the rounded rectangle tool as the way to go. If the smooth function worked well that would be a nice timesaver.
I found, however, that the Smooth function doesn't give very smooth results (rather like a chain saw hacking away at the corners).
The simplest (and better looking way) still seems to be using the rounded rectangle. It was pretty simple, I just drew the rounded rectangle right over a rectangle I had created (no guessing about the size then), created a selection from the new path (staying on the rectangle layer), filled with the appropriate color, inverse selected and deleted the rest. That way you also keep all of the layer effects (what I assume you mean by attributes) without copying and pasting...

tfoster

I will say though that that would be a nice feature for Photoshop to incorporate-the ability to specify a corner radius on a rectangular selection right away so you needn't go through these intermediate steps to create this very common shape...
At least the rounded rectangle tool is there now-before it arrived I remember either having to create the rounded corners by hand with more selection/erasure manipulation [confused] or creating the shape in Illustrator in pasting it in...!

Welles

Haw! I was a cheater even then and used Extensis PhotoGraphics to have vector capacities inside Photoshop. By the way, tfoster, welcome to the forums. Sounds like you've been around PS a long time. Expertise is always welcome! [righton]

tfoster

Thanks-
Yes, I go back a ways! Why, I remember when Photoshop 3 would fit on a floppy! (what are those? )