CS4 Treats Rounded Corner Objects Differently
A question from Scott Russell led us to discover an interesting difference between CS3 and CS4: An old trick for making one or more corners rounded no longer works in the newest version. I first heard of this trick from Sandee Cohen at a conference, and the fact that it worked both amazed me and made me nervious. It made me nervous because it just shouldn’t work; it seemed like a bug to me, so it’s not entirely surprising that in CS4 it no longer appears to work.
The trick was this: Draw a rectangle and apply rounded corners with it (with Object > Corner Options). Now switch to the Pen tool and click on the path near a corner. Finally, switch to the Direct Selection tool and drag that new point over the existing corner point. The rounded corner suddenly “pops” back to a sharp corner.
It’s amazing that it worked, and it helped a lot of people make frames with some rounded and some non-rounded corners. But why would InDesign do that? I never understood how it worked, so I was wary of it. Now, with CS4, it doesn’t work anymore… Actually, it’s even stranger: When you drag the new point over the corner point, all the points on the path turn to corner points. That makes even less sense to me.
What’s worse, documents created with this trick in CS3 and earlier also “break” when opened in CS4, causing documents to appear very different!
Maybe it’s a bug in CS4. Or maybe it was a bug in CS3. I don’t know.
So what’s to be done? Use the cornereffects script to make individually-rounded corners instead. It’s easy, it’s free, and you already have it (though you might not know you do).
I didn’t ever use this trick, but I think it’s a real problem when a file is opened differently than it was saved. New versions of software need to open old documents in a “compatibility” mode that ensures all the old features are replicated exactly, bugs and all. So, while the original trick may or may not be a bug, failing to correctly display a CS3 file using the trick is a bug.
This has really bummed me out actually. It was a great tip to show folks, and as you said it was broken. You had me all excited when you said you had a workaround…
I admit, knowing it was a “feature” I wasn’t entirely shocked that it disappeared in CS4. The only problem I have with the Corner Effects script is the fact that it’s not dynamic, so if you need to resize any “part” of the shape, you need to ensure that you select all the points of its path that make up the corner effect, otherwise it becomes distorted. It’s also a case of trial and error when attempting to find just the right radius setting. I also find the “Pattern” pop-up (under Options) a little confusing for first-time users of the script… “First Point” references the top-left point of a rectangle, the top point of a 5-point star, etc — what’s the logic? Clock-wise from North? Top-left corner? This is even more confusing when dealing with polygons with five or more sides and stars.
As a somewhat more dynamic workaround — that is limited to a single corner of a path — you can open the path first (Object > Paths > Open Path) BEFORE applying the Corner Effects command (not the script). The effect will still be dynamic, but will be limited to the one corner being excluded from the effect. At this point, when you resize the entire shape with the Selection Tool the corner effects adjust accordingly, maintaining their look.
Wahhh, I want “feature” back….
I liked the trick that Sandee had with the points, but the script works good too. I find it weird though that the CornerEffects.vbs doesn’t scale properly while the CornerEffects.jsx does. Wonder why that is.
Wow! What a great trick to make 1 or more corners straight again in CS3! I didn’t knew that. I’m graphic designer and can bennefit from this trick. I use rounded corners a lot and thought that InDesign’s way to make rounded squares was strange, because you can’t alter the corners, made by this feature. Now with dragging a penpoint to a corner, i can in a way.
For now, i will stick to CS3, but hope to buy CS4 in the near future, and that the rounded corner issue is solved by than…
greetings,
Jack from Holland
I never used that trick because I love the script so much!
Maybe because I’m an illustrator guy first and an InDesign guy second, I do things differently(also, the CS3 trick isn’t much of a trick, it’s just indesign not being able to round the difference between the two points).
I just overlap the rounded box with a square one on the corner that I want sharp, then use pathfinder and merge the two shapes. This creates a permanent/resizable shape (and it works in every version of Illustrator/InDesign).
I don’t have “corner options” as a menu choice, and am stymied by being unable to make rounded corners with CS4. Can anyone help?
Script is cool, but the fact that CS4 breaks a file created in CS3 is just plain wrong. I can open a file in CS3 that displays a frame with rounded corners, and open the same file with CS4 and they’re gone! Even if the “feature” in CS3 was a bug that Adobe fixed for CS4, at least throw a flag or something. Something like “Hey buddy, be on the lookout for square rounded corners. Anything. This might be great for a designer, but for someone who works with files from different sources and different versions of ID, it just makes my job more difficult.