How to make border of a shape (e.g. button) blur/feather inwards?

Hi

I am trying to create a button that
- is white
- has rounded corners
- that fades to a grey border EVENLY all the way around.

So I've make my rectangle of the exact size I want, I rounded the corners, I've made the middle white and the borders grey.

I tried using the contour tool but you end up with sharp corners of the white area, when the contours go inwards.

i.e. The tricky bit is that it needs to fade *smoothly* around the corners - i.e. as if the outside border has BLURRED evenly into the body of the button.

I tried the FX Feathering tool which I don't really understand - it has the correct effect but I cant work out how to control the AMOUNT of feathering!

Any suggestions? (are there any good training videos on this?)

J

Using Feathering:
1. Create your button with whatever color you want (in this case, gray).
2. Clone it and color it white.
3. Set feathering on the white image to taste.

Using Contours, there should be an option to make the corners round rather than pointed.

-- Ben

Ah-ha - I finally found the feathering control AND got it working. Perfect - many thanks :)

You can also try an Inner Contour.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

You can also try an Inner Contour.

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If you mean dragging the contour inwards, this has an unwanted affect that you can get very sharp square edges appearing on the inside. With a nice soft rounded outside boundery to the box, this sharpness jars. :(

OK. So don't use it then. :)