teddY-risatioN™

Have you ever heard of quick masking in photoshop? Well quick mask basically allows you to select a particular area which you will mask it (protect it from being edited), so the area beyond your selection will be free to you for any form of editing!

Quick masking is one of the most convenient method in Photoshop for making selection because it allows you to do anything to make your selection - e.g. you can draw a circle and the area beyond the circle will be selected for editing. In the normal mode you won't be able to make circular selections!

Having the Adobe Photoshop CS2 is a must Anyway, there is no need for me to upload a demo.psd file since this can be done quite easily, unlike the more complicated Mosaic Tutorial (check it out!). 

Let's go! 

Step 1 - Open the Image 

Step 2 - Create a New Layer 

It is essential to create a new layer since you will make the selection in the new layer. Being a photoshop amateur I would prefer to create this new layer because sometimes quick mask doesn't work on the locked background layer.

Step 3 - Edit in Quick Mask Mode

Step 4 - Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool

Follow the mouse cursor. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool and then set the radius. I've used 30, but you can set it according to the magtinude of the curve you want. The bigger the radius, the larger the curved edges will be. Be warned that you should not set the radius to an extremely high value as it might crop out part of the image which you want to preserve.

Step 5 - Check your Canvas Size

I would not want to draw the curved rectangle manually as it is relatively inaccurate unless you can control your mouse correctly and ensure that it wraps the entire image. So we will first find out the canvas size of the image. However, if your canvas is larger than the image such that you have extra empty spaces, crop the image first.

Step 6 - Here is Your Canvas Size

Do remember it! In this case is width:1200px and height:1600px. Remember propoerly as sometimes we might mix up the height and width.

Step 7 -  Edit Rectangle Tool Configuration

Follow the mouse cursor. First, select the Rounded Rectangle, and then click the black arrow to edit Geometry Options. Under the few options available, selected Fixed Size. Do you still remember your canvas size? Enter the height and width values accordingly to set the size of the rounded rectangle.

Step 8 - Select Carefully

Carefully move your cursor to the top left corner of the image. The VERY top left.

Step 9 - Click and… Tada!

With the cursor at the top left corner, click the left mouse button and tada! You'll have the curved rectangle completely covering the image (with some empty spaces at the four corners… they will be deleted to create a curved edges effect). Almost there! Remeber that you're in Quick Mask Mode so your original image has not been edited! So fret not about that horrible red thing hovering over your image

Step 10 -  Back to Standard Mode

Now we shall revert back to the Standard Mode by clicking the icon on the toolbar.

Step 11 - Effect of Quick Mask Mode

Now then you'll see the effect of quick mask mode. The mode will exclude the area you've defined in Step 9 and the undrawn area will be selected now (indicated by the red arrows). 

Step 12 - Access the Image Layer

Now we shall revert to the layer where the original image is located. For the past 11 steps we are working on the new layer created in Step 1. Select the layer, right-click it and selected Layer From Background…

Step 13 - Done!

After Step 12, press the "Delete" button on your keyboard and the selected areas will be gone, creating a curved edges effect! Tada! :mrgreen: 

And here is the final product of this tutorial. Note that the curves are slighly bigger as seen in the image above because the curve is so small (since I'm working on such a huge image), so I repeated the steps and set the radius at 50px.

Hope you find this tutorial benefitial! Feel free to comment any suggestions for improvement, flaws etc… just write them in your comments. Have a nice weekend!