Shadow & Rounded Corner Effect on Pictures

I have been asked several times now how I achieve the shadow and rounded corner effects on recent pictures I posted here in my blog. You’ll need to have GIMP as a photo editor, though. Don’t have GIMP? Download it for FREE here! It can be quite handy for simple editing of your pictures. Not too complicated like Photoshop, and has the common features which can help you achieve simple effects for your photos. Here’s the quick and easy tutorial to make your photos more visually interesting:

1. Open the GIMP program and select the photo which you want to edit. Here’s mine:



2. Navigate to Filters -> Decor -> Round Corners (as shown in the screencap below).



3. A window will pop-up. Adjust the Edge radius (for the rounded corner effect. I usually go for 45 on images smaller than 500px) and check Add drop-shadow from the options presented.



4. You can also uncheck Work on copy (so that the effect will be added to the current picture opened and not on another copy) and Add background (if you want the picture to blend well with your non-white background).
5. Hit Ok and save the picture when it’s done. Save it as yourfilename.png if you have a non-white background and you’ve ticked off the add a background option in Step #4. If you save it as yourfilename.jpg, it will still have a white background even though you unchecked Add a Background in Step #4.

That’s it! Enjoy playing with your pictures! Will post more Gimp tutorials soon. This tutorial is especially for my marce Kikamz, because it’s her birthday today! :yay: 🙂