Rounded Corners

1. Start by creating a selection with the Elliptical Marquee Tool on the top right corner as shown on fig. 1. Hold down the Shift key while dragging so you get a symmetrical sircle.

If you take a close look at the elliptical marquee tool you will notice that it has 4 small regions on each side of the selection which are flat. When you place the selection you will be using those regions to placed it properly. Use the arrow keys to position it as shown below.

2. Now we will make a new selection by using the Rectangular Marquee tool. Start at the upper left corner and move it towards the sircle while holding down the Shift key. Stop when you get to the top flat regions of the sircle and continue down just below the black area.

Now you will have a simular selection as shown below.

3. Now do the same with the lower part of the sircle. Start in the lower left corner and continue up and to the right while holding down the Shift key.

4. The last thing we have to is to get rid of that upper right corner. Invert the selection (Shift + Ctrl + I) and hit the delete key. Deselect.

It should now look like this.

5. There are also an easier way of making round corners, but this is best suited if you want to make all the four corners round.

Ctrl + Click on the shape and go to the Channels palette. hit the Save Selection as Channel button.

You should now have an Alpha 1 channel.

7. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and make a radius of 6 pixels. Hit Ok.

8. Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels (Ctrl + L) and move the handles towards the middle as shown below.

Now make a new selection by Ctrl + Click on the Alpha 1 channel.

9. Go back to the Layers palette and Inverse the selection (Ctrl + Shift + I) and hit the delete key.