Tip #3150 - Shapes in Photoshop
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Shapes
in Photoshop
There comes a time
in every Photoshop user's life when they stop and wonder how in the world
could they create a rectangle with rounded off edges. Does that ring a
bell for you? Well, today I am going to tell you all about a couple of
ways to make rectangles with round edges in Photoshop. First of all, let’s
create a new document and on a brand new layer, make a regular rectangle
selection with the help of the rectangular marquee tool. Once you have
made the rectangular selection, switch over to the Channel's palette and
create a new channel.
The selection you
made in the Layers palette should be active in the new channel you just
created, so go ahead and fill it with a color. Any color will do, as this
color selection won’t have any impact on your final product. After
you fill it up with a color, deselect it by pressing Ctrl + D
or by clicking on Select, Deselect.
Now, go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian
Blur. Blur the image to a considerable amount. In my example
here, I have set the blurred amount to 22. The more you blur, the smaller
the end result will be. After blurring it, pull up the Image Levels
dialogue box by pressing Ctrl + L or by going to Image,
Adjustments, Levels. Now, this next
part is easy. This time around, you don’t need to play with the
sliders to see what kind of result it gives you. Simply bring all three
of the sliders toward the middle.
This essentially means
that you need to bring the two sliders that you see on the extreme left
and right, toward the middle slider. As the sliders accumulate in the
middle, you’ll see the blur effect going away, with nice rounded
off edges appearing on your rectangle. Seems like magic, doesn’t
it? Press OK to close the Levels dialogue box. Now, we
need to take this rounded off rectangle back to our original layer.
Do a Ctrl
+ click on the channel that we created (alpha channel) to load
the rounded rectangle selection. Then switch back to the Layers
palette. You should see the selection you just loaded from the channel
active on the layer you related, so go ahead and fill it up with the color
you want. Bada bing! You are done. In just a few steps, you have a neat
little rectangle with rounded edges!
You can also create
a rounded edges rectangle effect by going to Select,
Modify, Smooth, but as you would find
out, it doesn’t really give a neat sharp effect in the end. I would
suggest that you go the Select, Modify, Smooth route only when the rounded
off edges that you desire are smaller in nature. So there you go. A basic,
yet important, Photoshop trick!
~ Yogesh Bakshi
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