Rounded corners – Part 1

A lot of sites and even some printed advertisements are using rounded edges for content. It can be extremely useful and adds a lighter sense to a design overall. Illustrator and Flash both have rounded square tools that are very helpful but unfortunately Photoshop does not. There are a few ways to go about getting the effect in Photoshop and the simplest way, I just read from [www.tutorio.com/tutorial/photoshop-round-corners] is to make a selection with the square tool and then refine the edge [select-refine edge] smooth parameter to full. This creates a nice effect but the corners are blurry.
I also found that one can make a rounded edge using the pen tool to create a path but I do not prefer using vectors in Photoshop. Since I am going for speed and the way I use is lengthy and slow but creates a smooth, rounded edge. I manually pull out 6 guides, equally spaced from each other to create a perfect square. I use these guides to form a perfect circle [shift + drag] and then I add box selections to the right and bottom of this circle. This will give a rounded corner of a box. And since this can take a whole 10 minutes, I decided the best practice is to use the actions feature of Photoshop.
I am not including a link on this site to the Actions Set download. Please visit www.tuckers-photography.com for more information. See the Journal page.
Although the scope of this tutorial does not cover ‘Actions’ in Photoshop I highly recommend it for everyone using Photoshop. Learn it, love it and deploy it for amazing results. After you create a few actions of your own, you will understand the power that is nested in this tool. If you work with multiple files or want to re-use a workflow, Actions is extremely valuable.
To use the set of actions, you must install it in your actions folder. I am using a PC, so everything you see is set for PC but a Mac will put this folder in a similar place. Find the “Program Files” folder [may be different for a Mac] and then look for the “Adobe” folder inside. Inside the “Adobe” folder, find the “Adobe Photoshop CS 2/3/4” folder. Inside that folder you will see a “Presets” folder. The “Presets” folder contains a “Actions” folder.
You should now be looking at a number of files that end in ‘.atn’ These are Action sets or folders. These sets appear in Photoshop in the Actions panel but you must first load them in the actions window. Click on the actions window options; see example.

From the drop down menu you will see a group of sets at the bottom. That’s were you set should show up but Photoshop needs to be reset in order to see the folder. Restart Photoshop and you will now see the set if your repeat this step.
Open a file, 300 rez with at least 3 inches by 3 inches. Run the action in the new folder you see. Viola!

Please post a comment if you have any questions.