trying to make rounded 2px border, white inside, transparent outside

[spewn]

ok, i've been looking at tutorials, watching videos, etc., to no avail.

i can create nice rounded corners, but i'm looking to create a border that's 2 pixels wide, efefef in color, round edge, and transparent, so it can be put against any color background.

i was able to complete this, but once i put against a background, like black color, the outside edges look very jagged, or at least not smooth at all.

i'm looking for any help to complete this.

i'm so new to photoshop, but was able to figure some things out. although, the jaggedness is killing me!

thanks in advance.

- g

 

[apepp]

...2 pixels is very thin, is this an image for web use or print use?

...what tool are you using to create the rounded corners, shape tool or marquee tool?

Andrew

 

[AkutaSame]

Regardless of the technique you are using to create your rounded corners (i.e. using the pen tool or using the gaussien blur w/ levels trick), you are bound to have some rough edges on a 2 pix border. There isn't enough of the border to anti-alias the corners.

My suggestion, create a layer with a solid color (in this case, the gray you are working with) and use a layer mask with the rounded rectangle shape on the shape tool. Create a full mask (making it black, so nothing shows through) and then use the shape tool to create the rounded cornered rectangle. Once the shape is create change to the pen tool and fill the path with white. This will give you your "outer edge." Resize the shape using the path free transform (right click inside the shape and choose transform path). Shrink it down to what you want the inside edge to look like and fill this with black. This will create a border appearance with nice smooth edges/corners. You can create any number of layers to put below this layer and have it look nice. Just remember, if you are using a selection tool of any sort you'll get distortion. When a selection is made, the "vectoring" of the pen tool/layer/etc. is gone. It's now a raster or bit-based selection. This is likely what you are running into.