Manipulatable Round Corner Boxes in Photoshop

This short tutorial will show you how to create rounded corner boxes of any diameter that you can easily resize and manipulate.

To create manipulatable boxes with round corners, create a new layer and create a quadrilateral box with the selection tool (figure 1). Use the paint bucket to fill it in with the desired color (don’t forget that you can always make changes afterward). Now open the layer style (double click to the far-right of your layer name) and go to the ‘Drop Shadow’ filter. In the color box next to ‘Blend Mode,’ select your box color from the tool palette. Under the ‘Blend Mode’ select ‘Normal’ and make the ‘Opacity’ 100%. This will allow us to use any color we want without worrying about how it looks. Drag the ‘Spread’ to 100% and the ‘Distance’ to zero. Now you can fiddle with the ‘Size’ slider to change the diameter of the corners (figure 2).

When finished, you can freely adjust the size of your box without affecting the corner quality. If you change colors, you will have to edit the ‘Drop Shadow’ color to match. To get around this, once you have the desired size and shape you can right click the layer to enter its properties and select ‘Convert To Smart Object’ and then right click once more and select ‘Rasterize Layer’ (figure 3). This will allow you to manipulate your new box as a solid item: your drop shadow will now become part of the box. It will also allow you to add new layer styles.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment!

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