Create round images or rounded corners using Word

Most images on the web are either square or rectangle. Sometimes however we may need round images or rounded rectangle. For example, many business websites have a staff page with round thumbnails of staff members in the team. If you want rounded corners for avatars or images, you may think of Photoshop, the most well known image editor software. This tool is very powerful in editing and creating all kinds of image files, but it may be difficult to use for beginners. We deserve an easier way to merely add round corners to images. In fact, the Office Word, the most well-known word processor, can help you round a corner of a rectangle in easy steps.

In this article, we will firstly show you how to make photo corners rounded using Microsoft Word on PC. Then share with Photoshop users two quick ways to round picture corners. We will also use a free image program, ShareX, to make rounded corners or create round images for free on Windows computer.

Part 1. Create round images or round corners using Word

Launch Word on your PC and create a new blank document. Then click Insert tab, click the down arrow below Shapes, then choose a ready-made shape, in this case you can choose Oval if you want to create round photos, or choose Rounded Rectangle if you like to add round corners to a rectangle picture. We will choose the latter in this demo.

Drag the borders of the added shape to the size you need. Click the down arrow besides Shape Fill, choose Picture from the drop-down menu.

Instead of filling the shape with color or texture, we will fill the rounded rectangle with the picture we like to add rounded corners to. The Insert Pictures dialog pops up where you will have the options to choose pictures or photos from a file saved on your PC, stock images from Word library, online pictures from sources like Bing, Flickr or OneDrive, icons from Word icon selection. Browse to the image file you like to edit and insert the picture into the shape in Word document. See below screenshot.

Save round image or rectangle image with round corners

You can’t save the round image or rectangle image with rounded corners from Word to your computer. As a workaround, we can use the Snipping Tool to take a screenshot and save it as an image file. Or copy it from Word document and paste it to an image editor on PC, then save it to your computer from there.

If you don’t have any third-party image editors installed on your PC, you can simply use Microsoft Paint which is built-in with Windows OS. Press Ctrl+C or right click on the Oval or Rounded Rectangle in Word and choose Copy. This will copy the rounded image to clipboard. Now go to launch the Windows Paint app on your PC. You can find it from Start >> All apps >> Windows Accessories >> Paint. Create a new file in Paint app, paste the rounded image from clipboard to MS Paint app. Use the selection tool to drag & drop to select the image, then trim it to remove unnecessary blank area from the image before you save it to your computer. Currently MS Paint can’t save images with transparency. The blank area in the background will become part of the output image file. Save the image file from Paint app to your computer hard drive and you get the image with rounded shape or rectangle picture with white rounded corners.

Part 2. Create rounded corners using Photoshop

If you have Photoshop installed on your computer, you can make photo corners rounded in several ways. Here are two common and quick methods to create rounded corners in Photoshop on Windows computer.

Method 1. Create rounded corners using rectangle marquee tool

Open the photo or image in Photoshop. Turn the background into a layer from the Layers panel in the bottom right section.

Select the Rectangle Marquee Tool which can be found at the top of the left toolbar.

Draw a rectangle on the image. From the top menu, select Select->Modify->Smooth. Enter the desired corner radius.

Select Inverse and delete it from the image. Select the Crop tool from the left toolbar to crop unnecessary parts of the picture if needed.

Go to save the image as PNG file from the File menu so you can preserve the transparency of the rounded corners.

Method 2. Make rounded corners using rectangle tool

Open the photo or image in Photoshop. Turn the background into a layer from the Layers panel in the bottom right section.

Select the Rectangle Tool from the toolbar on the left side. Draw a rectangle on the background image. Select the desired roundness by adjusting the radius value in the Properties panel on the right side.

Move the background layer above the rectangle layer from the Layers panel in the bottom right section.

Right click on the background layer and select Create Clipping Mask to make all the image corners rounded.

Go to export the image as a new PNG file from the File menu.

Part 3. Create round images or round corners using ShareX

ShareX is a free and open source screen capture and recorder for Windows with many useful file sharing and productivity tools.

Run ShareX, go to Tools > Image effects…, then add the Rounded corners effect, you can then adjust the corner radius to make the corners rounded. If you like to make a round image or photo, go to crop the image file to a square using ShareX, then set the corner radius to half of its width or height.

Go to download this free program and test it out by yourself. Feel free to leave us a message in the comment section below if you encounter any problems.

Update Nov 2022: replaced the old screenshots with new ones to reflect the change in Word for Windows version 2210.