Expert: LizaL - 10/25/2004

Question
Hi there

I was wondering if you could help me with my adobe photoshop 7 enquiry.

I'm trying to create a circular image in photoshop using a rectangular photograph.

Is this possible?

Its to try and create a circular button with an image on it.

Thanks
Dolly x

Answer
Hi Dolly,

If you're able to crop your photograph and use just a part of it for your button, make the image the size you want it, then use the elliptical marquee tool to select the part for the button. The elliptical marquee is the selection tool behind the rectangular one -- press on the rectangle if it's showing, and you'll see the selections available. Choose the elliptical one (the circle), click and drag the area you want for your button, and then select Inverse from the Select pulldown menu. Then select Cut from the Edit menu. That'll give you your selection as a circle.

If you want it to be a perfect circle, hold down the Shift key as you drag with the selection tool. This constrains the motion of the tool, and will make for sure that you get a perfect circle. (This is true of all the selection tools, and many other tools as well.)

Now if you want the entire photograph to be a circle, you can kinda-sorta do it -- but you'd have to use a Filter, and your image will wind up looking sort of distorted. But you can experiment with this and see if you like this type of effect.

For this, go to the Filter pulldown menu and select Spherize. You'll see that you can select your degree of spherizing -- up to 100%. This will make the image a raised circle -- kind of bulgy-looking. Apply the filter. At that point, you could use the elliptical selection tool and select the most circular part of the image, then do the Inverse and Cut steps I described above.

So those are two ways that come to mind first. If I can think of more, I'll certainly post back and let you know!

Hope this helps,

Lisa