GIMP Version: 2.8
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: Windows 7
GIMP Experience: Intermediate Level

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Hey!

So, I'm tring to create a border around my rounded corners on a rectangle. I'm using the Layer - Layer Effects - Stroke tool, but the transitional point from corner to flat surface does not look right. It appears thicker and just doesn look right...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Sarah

the stroke from layerfx is crap

alpha to select your rounded rectangle
save selection to a path
deselect
go into the paths-tab and choose stroke path

Yes, as Esper says never stroke the selection, stroke the path.
This is a very nice video done by one of our members, (Jolie) and it is very good at explaining this problem.
Don't stroke the selection, stroke the path

smp: welcome to gimp chat!

haha, molly, you posted just as i was about to click submit - you're a master ninja .

Careful with that - you'll get sued by Apple.


(sorry, had to be said...)

Thanks for all of you help!

So I selected parh, and then stroked path, and although it does look better, it still seemd to have trouble with the intermiediate areas between the curve and the flat area.

Could it be some thing else that I'm choosing incorrectly, like the radius of rounding or the thickness of the stroke?

Again thanks for your help and time!

hard to say without any pics
but Gimp is raster-based, it will always be built from pixels
if you want something smoother, do it with Inkscape


@dd: is sue = molly ?
she works for the penguin invasion, not apple

EDIT:
yeah it looks a bit jaggy

you could gaussian blur the stroke by 2 or 3 to mask it, depending on what look you want

This help?

yes, its the same that i got
i dont think there is much you can do

maybe build your own rounded rectangle with circles and a rectangle ?

EDIT: wait, there is another option
a script called shape paths
it creates paths, also advanced rounded rectangles
http://registry.gimp.org/node/59

I tried to gaussian blur it and i didn't make it better.

Yah, originally i was building them manually, but it can quickly become tedious. So i was hoping it was just soemthing that i was missing out on.

Thanks for the help and time!

Thanks! I'll try that.

what about creating another layer behind the original layer, grow the selection and fill with the border color. No stroking involved but there will be a border showing.

yes, much better
although the script is hard do understand

A simple thing you can do:

1 - make a rounded rectangle selection (you do this easily by checking "rounded corners" in the rectangle selction tool)
2 - fill it with colour of your choice
3 - shrink the selection by X pixels
4 - clear selection (press delete)

Where X is the width of the border that you want.

Wat? Doesn't look that bad to me. Look, rounded corners:



Shrunk by ten:



Tell me, what exactly is wrong with these. I don't see any pixelation or anything.

smp: when you make a path from selection your path inherits any unevenness in the selected region, in this case the original rectangle already has the problem with the rounding not being perfect. i've also noticed that the path created isn't always optimal - lots of unnecessary nodes that can be removed to advantage, and some node handles that can be adjusted. so if i were you i'd try making both rectangles with the shape paths script. usually, though, i work with selections i can't make in the shape paths script and then i go in and edit the path i made from selection to optimize it. i did that to a rounded rectangle and found i could improve it. look at this:

i was stupid enough not to take a screen shot of my original rectangle stroke, but it looked just like yours, with a clearly visible dent where the rounding started. i fixed that up just by clicking the nodes closest to the corners and dragging out the handles a little.
also, sometimes when i'm working with for example text with an outer stroke that is likely to get jagged edges i make the text a little bigger (two or three sizes) than i want it and feather the edges a little (2-3 px) of both the original text and the stroke. when i scale it down to the size i want it it looks sharp again and the edges don't look so jagged. make sure the difference in size isn't too big, though, that will make the edges even more jagged.

Esper's 100% correct; use paths to stroke; much cleaner results. Not sure what the issue with stroke selection is as opposed to stroke path, but it's been an isue for generations of GIMP now.

Issue is simple :
1) selection is a bitmap with all its limitation because its unit is a pixel , more pixels are squared so jagging of curved/oblique lines can't be avoided but only minimized (by sort of blurring )

2 ) path is vectorial with all its advantages

and only smart solution, from a programming side i may imagine would be the same of that you say implemented by PS:
The selection to stroke is automatically converted to a vector (to a path ) and is the path to be stroked