How do I create rounded boxes in Photoshop ? Is probably one of the most commonly asked questions about photoshop. Fortunately there are at least four very easy to use methods for creating rounded corners in Photoshop and they are all covered in this tutorial.
Photoshop Round Rectangles with Autoshapes
This is a simple and flexible method for creating rounded rectangles works in Photoshop 6 or higher.
- To create a rounded rectangle tool using autoshapes you need to select the auto-shapes tool rounded rectangle tool
- Select the appropriate roundness from the setting and drag it out onto the canvas.
- Now you have a path in the shape of a rounded rectangle. Choose the Direct Selection Tool from the tools panel (or press A), now to turn the path into a selection right click and choose make selection.
You can also fill or stroke the path or turn the path into a vector mask.
Photoshop Rounded Corners with the Selection Tool
This is probably the simplest method for getting rounded selections, in photoshop.
- Simply draw out a rectangular selection with the marquee tool
- Then goto Select->Modify->Smooth. Then set the radius size depending on how round you want the corners in the selection to be.
You aren't limited to just drawing a plain rectangle with the marquee tool, the same technique also works with more complex shapes
Rounded Corners with Blurring and Sharpening
This is the oldest and most widely used method for creating rounded rectangles. I am not really a fan of this one, because almost everything it does can be achieved much more easily done with one of the other methods.
Part one of this method of the method create a simple rectangle, then blur it using Filter->Gaussian Blur.
Part two is to sharpen the blurred rectangle, this can be done with a variety of methods. One is to goto Filter->Sharpen->Unsharp mask and then play around with the settings, another possible way to do it is to use photoshop levels.
Pixel by Pixel Rounded Rectangle
The last method is to manually create small clean crisp rounded rectangles. Its not as flexible as the others but deserves a mention anyways.
The technique is very simple and dosen't require any of photoshop's complex tools. Just create a simple box erase the corners and then create new rounded corners. Different degrees of 'roundness' can be achieved depending upon what you draw (see image)
This techinique was used in the photoshop pixel button tutorial
