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Fixing The “Rounded Corners” Selection Problem

 

Ever have this happen? You draw a selection with the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) and the corners of your selection are rounded, rather than nice and straight? This happens to a lot of people, especially if they’ve been drinking. If you haven’t been drinking but you’re suffering from rounded-corner selections, look up in the Options Bar, and you’ll see a field for Feather. Chances are there’s some number other than zero in this field, and what’s happening is every time you draw a selection with that tool, it’s automatically feathering (softening) the edge. What probably happened is you intentionally (or accidentally) added a feather amount at some time, then later forgot to set it back to its default of zero. So to fix it, just highlight the field and type 0 (zero). Incidentally, this is a great Photoshop prank to play on co-workers, friends, soon-to-be-enemies, etc., because the Feather field is usually the last place they’ll look.

7 Comments

  1. Charles Krause said on — June 14, 2009 @ 8:06 pm

    Just a note to say I learn a lot from this website and think it’s well organized, thorough and one of the best I’ve found. Keep it going please and thanks a lot for all you do.
    Charles Krause

  2. Lisa said on — October 6, 2009 @ 2:29 pm

    I am new to PS. Could you specify where to find the filed for Feather? I am experiencing this problem. Thank you.

  3. Mary said on — November 25, 2009 @ 6:50 pm

    Thank you! This was driving me crazy.

  4. VictorQ said on — March 7, 2011 @ 11:54 pm

    I am running on Windows, I am not location the Options Bar. When I got to make a rectangle the edges are rounded. The Refine Edges tab appears but when I click on it the Fethearing is already set to 0.

  5. marianney said on — April 18, 2011 @ 4:30 pm

    OMG thank you thank you thank you. This has been driving me nuts! I just installed CS5 and haven’t used the feathering at all, so I’m not sure how the heck that happened, but the zero fixed it. phew!

  6. dkoochie said on — May 7, 2011 @ 11:22 pm

    thank you very much

  7. Johan said on — November 15, 2011 @ 2:50 am

    Thanks! :D
    I said a lot of bad words about photoshot Marquee, but i must be drunk then because now it works fine after your guide!

    Johan/Sweden

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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