Rounding and chamfering corners in Paint by Zaweba

Corners say a lot about a design. Sharp ones feel technical, generous rounds feel friendly, and a clipped chamfer suggests a ticket, a label or something engineered. The Corner tool in Paint by Zaweba lets you set that character directly on the shape by dragging, rather than redrawing it.

Pick the tool, point at a corner of a shape layer and drag inwards. The corner rounds as you move, and you see the result live. Because the effect is kept as an editable setting rather than baked into the outline, you can come back later and drag it again.

Three kinds of corner

A round corner is the familiar curve, the sort you see on buttons and app icons. A chamfer cuts the corner off with a straight line, the look of a luggage tag or a dog-eared card. An inverted corner scoops inwards instead of bulging out, which gives the classic ticket stub or the frame around an old certificate. You choose the style, then drag to set how far it reaches into the shape.

Shift applies the drag to all corners at once. That is the quickest route to an even rounded rectangle from any rectangle you have already drawn, or to a uniform chamfer around a polygon. Without Shift, each corner is independent, so you can round the top two corners of a tab and leave the bottom two square where it meets a panel.

Where it works

The tool works on corners that sit between straight segments. That covers rectangles, polygons, stars, and shapes you have built with the pen using straight lines. A point where a curve meets a curve is not a corner in this sense, so the tool leaves it alone; if you need a softer join there, adjust the curve handles with the path tools instead.

This rule also explains a common puzzle. If you have combined two rectangles with Unite and the corner you are pointing at will not respond, check whether one of its neighbouring segments has become a curve, for example after a Shape Builder merge with a circle.

Using the Corner tool well

Decide on the corner style for a whole set of graphics before you start. Buttons, cards and panels that share a radius look like they belong together, and mismatched radii are one of the first things that make a layout look home-made. A good method is to draw one master shape, set its corners with Shift held, duplicate it for the other items and then resize.

Keep an eye on nested shapes. A rounded card with a rounded photo inside it looks best when the inner radius is a little smaller than the outer one, so the gap between them stays even around the curve. Drag the inner corners until the margin looks constant.

Inverted corners work nicely on labels and stickers in combination with the Subtract Front command: build the outline, invert the corners, then cut a hole for a string or a hanging tab.

Mistakes to avoid with the Corner tool

Dragging too far on a small shape is the main one. Once the rounds meet in the middle of an edge there is nothing straight left, and the shape turns into a lozenge. Zoom in and drag gently on small items.

Another is rasterising too early. While the shape is a shape layer, the corner stays live, so you can still change your mind about a sharp or soft look after the client has seen it. Turning it into pixels freezes it. If you need to paint on top, add a new pixel layer above it instead.

How it fits with the other vector tools

The Corner tool pairs naturally with the boolean commands, the Shape Builder and Offset Path in the Vector menu. Build the outline with the first two, set the corners here, then use Offset Path to make a matching border around the result. Everything stays vector, so the finished shape can go into an SVG export or be scaled up for print without losing its clean edges in Paint by Zaweba.