How create rounded corners for a layer or selection in Photoshop

by

I have a white screen area 142×113 px in Photoshop.

I select half of this area and tried Select ⇒ Modify ⇒ Smooth but it does not work the way I expected. I tried decreasing the selection’s width and now the Smooth command works, but not very well.

I have 3 questions:

  1. Why smooth does not work in the first condition?
  2. What are the best ways for creating smooth edges (rounded corners) of a selection?
  3. What are the best ways for creating smooth edges (rounded corners) of a Layer?

Answer

I don’t know why Photoshop has never had a “rounded rectangle” selection tool. Seems like it ought to, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t. So, to answer your questions:

  1. “Smooth” is designed to even out rough edges. It doesn’t do effective job of rounding corners because that’s not what it’s for.

  2. To create a selection with rounded corners, you have to start with a path and turn it into a selection: Use the rounded rectangle Shape tool in “Path” mode (it’s the middle icon, the one with the pen, between the Shape Layer and Fill Pixels icons) to create a path with the rounding you want, then press Ctl – Enter (Windows) or Cmd – Return (Mac OS) to turn the path into a selection.

To mask a layer, just move the selection to where you want it then click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. That will create a layer mask based on your selection.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : SilverLight , Answer Author : JohnB

Leave a Comment