PS7.............. Anti- Aliasing & The Rectangular Marquee

[John Slavney]

Apologies if this has been addressed before, but a search did not yield any results on the PC side, and a unresolved discussion on the Mac side.

The Anti-alias checkbox is greyed-out when the rectangular marquee is selected. The Mac discussion indicated that this was because, when making a rectangular selection, the lines are straight and no anti-aliasing will occur. The problem comes up when trying to make a rectangular selection with rounded corners, in which case the corners might be anti-aliased. The mac discussion also indicated that the solution was to pick another marquee tool, select the Anti-alias check box, and return to the Rectangle marquee tool-- but this doesn't seem to work. The solution I found was to take your file into ImageReady where there is a rounded rectangle marquee option that is not available in Photoshop. I'm wondering if it was left out of Photoshop by mistake. It seems that it should be an additional option in the toolbox, as in ImageReady.

[Jeremy Knudsen]

Try using vector shapes (the Shape Tool). There is a rounded rectangle there. I don't know of a rounded rectangle marquee tool out of the box.

[Mathias Vejerslev]

Select>Modify>Smooth with a rectangular marquee should do the trick.

You could also use chops to do this. (channel operations).

Mathias

[John Slavney]

Jeremy: Image Ready 7 has a rounded rectangle marquee tool.

Mathias: Smooting doesn't anti-alias the marquee. It gives you a jagged edge.

Can anyone at Adobe address why the rounded ractangle was left out of Photoshop? Seems like an oversight. THANKS.

[Grass Hopper]

John,

in the first post, Jeremy told you about the rounded rectangle tool!

Look at the shapes tool and one of the shapes is the rounded rectangle!! You have the option of anti-alias or not.

[John Slavney]

Grass Hopper-- Yes he mentioned the rounded rectangle SHAPE tool, but I was talking about a rounded rectangle MARQUEE tool. See the Image Ready tool palette where you'll find a "Rounded Rectangle Marquee Tool" in addition to a Rounded Rectangle Shape Tool. I am wondering why this marquee tool is not available in the Photoshop palette.

[Don McCahill]

Re: Can anyone at Adobe address why the rounded ractangle was left out of Photoshop? Seems like an oversight.

It wasn't left out. It never was there in the first place.

Probably because they don't see a need for a round-corner rectangle marquee. I have never needed one. If you do, you might go to the features request part of the forum and explain it, and perhaps it will be added to a future version.

[John Slavney]

I imagine it will be addressed by a patch.

[John R Nielsen]

No patch needed:

Press Q to enter Quick Mask mode. Use the Rounded Corner Recangle shape, with the 'Create filled reion' option. Once done, go back to Standard mode (Q again).

- John

[John Slavney]

Thanks John. But I still cannot figure out why the rounded rectangular marquee feature would be available in ImageReady and not Photoshop. My immediate wish for it came out of a need to create a rectangular box outline. I expected to be able to do that by creating a rectangular selection (with rounded corners) and stroking the selection. In ImageReady, you can directly create a rounded rectangular selection. I could do this using the quick mask mode and then selecting the rectangle shape using the magic wand with anti-aliasing on, but this is an extra step. In the final analysis, regardless of whether there are other ways of accomplishing the task,(or, as another user offered -- that he would never have a reason for such a tool), I'd sure like to know why this useful tool (useful to me anyway) is available in ImageReady and not in Photoshop itself.

[John R Nielsen]

John -

I figured you probably wanted to stroke the selection, but remember, you can stroke paths also, with any of the painting tools (Smudge, Eraser, etc.), instead of the simple x-pixel stroke selection. And, if you make a shape layer, you can apply a stroke to it (as well as all the other layer effects), and, ***it remains editable***. So I think the more useful tool is the one in Pshop.

- John