Premiere Pro does not include a built-in effect that rounds the corners of a still image, so the cleanest workflow is to clip the file to a rounded rectangle in your browser and drop the resulting transparent PNG into your timeline. Round Image Corners does that job by clipping a local JPG, PNG, or WebP to a same-size rounded rectangle inside the current browser tab, keeping the corner pixels transparent, and exporting a PNG that composites cleanly over any background. The radius control spans 1% to 50% of the image's shorter side, and for a 400 by 200 pixel file a 25% setting produces a 50 pixel corner radius, so the result is predictable whether the source is a wide banner, a square logo, or a portrait photo. Because the entire process runs locally, the file is never uploaded, which keeps confidential client assets and unreleased project art on your own machine. The output keeps the source's original width and height, and because it is a real PNG with a real alpha channel you can place it over video, over a solid color, or over another clip without painting a background.
Why Premiere Pro Does Not Clip Images to Rounded Rectangles
Premiere Pro is built around video, audio, and motion graphics rather than still-image masking, and that focus shows up the moment you try to soften the corners of a logo or a callout. The closest built-in option is the Crop effect, but Crop only produces straight rectangular edges and cannot curve a corner. Masking with the Opacity tool and a bezier path can simulate a rounded shape, but the workflow is awkward for a still image, the curves do not stay mathematically consistent across different source sizes, and the result is a Premiere Pro mask rather than a reusable image file you can drop into After Effects, Photoshop, or another sequence.
For most editors the practical answer is to do the rounding once, outside the timeline, and bring the finished asset back in. That is the gap a browser-based rounding tool fills, especially when the file should stay local for client confidentiality or for unreleased product art that cannot leave the building. Editors working on multi-asset packages also benefit from a single repeatable asset rather than a project-specific mask they have to recreate if the timeline changes.
What Round Image Corners Does in Your Browser
Round Image Corners reads a local image, clips it to a rounded rectangle, and exports a PNG with transparent corners. The full pipeline is decode, clip, encode, and download, and every step happens inside the current browser tab. The file is never sent to a server, which means there is no upload step, no account, and no waiting for a remote queue to finish.
The tool accepts JPG, PNG, and WebP inputs up to 25 MiB, and it also enforces a browser safety budget of 20,000 pixels per side and 40 megapixels total for the decoded image. Invalid files, empty files, unsupported types, decode failures, and failed PNG encoding produce visible errors instead of a silent or partial download, so you always know whether the asset you have on disk is the one you meant to round. The output is always a PNG, because JPEG cannot store transparency and a rounded corner is, by definition, partially transparent. The output keeps the source's exact width and height, so a 1920 by 1080 logo stays 1920 by 1080, and the file is saved with the suffix -rounded-corners.png so the format change is obvious in the file list.
How to Round Image Corners for Your Premiere Pro Project
The workflow is small enough to fit between two cups of coffee, and it does not require opening a heavy desktop editor.
- Open Round Image Corners in the same browser tab where you do your other image prep.
- Choose the JPG, PNG, or WebP you want to round, and confirm it falls within the displayed file and pixel limits.
- Move the radius control to a value between 1% and 50%. A 1% setting is a subtle softening, while 50% is the largest valid rounded-rectangle radius for the shorter side.
- Select the Round corners action to create the result, and inspect the same-size PNG preview to confirm the curve looks right.
- Download the PNG. The file is saved as your-source-name-rounded-corners.png, ready to drop into Premiere Pro.
- Repeat with a different radius at any time. Changing the file or the radius invalidates the previous result, and a new run does not require re-uploading the original.
How the Radius Control Translates to Pixels
The percentage is deliberately based on the shorter side of the image, which keeps the result predictable across wide, tall, and square sources. The shorter-side rule is the only mental model you need, and the tool rounds the result to a whole output pixel so the canvas math stays clean.
For a 400 by 200 pixel image, the shorter side is 200 pixels, and a 25% radius produces a 200 x 0.25 = 50 pixel corner radius. For a portrait source, the same rule uses the image's width, so a 200 by 400 pixel file at 25% still produces a 50 pixel corner radius. Square sources behave the same way in both directions, and the canvas always keeps the original width and height of the source. The result line in the tool reports the source-matching dimensions, the computed whole-pixel radius, the output format, and the approximate file size, which makes it possible to verify that a landscape or portrait file was not silently resized.
Importing the Rounded PNG Into Premiere Pro
Once the PNG is on disk, bringing it into a sequence is the same as importing any other still image with an alpha channel.
- In the Project panel, choose File, then Import, and select your-source-name-rounded-corners.png.
- Drag the clip onto a video track above the background plate, or onto a black solid if you want a clean backdrop for the asset.
- If the rounded image is part of a title or lower-third, nest it in a sequence and place that nested sequence above your main video. The transparent corners let the underlying video show through cleanly.
- Scale and position the image with the Effect Controls panel. Because the canvas kept the source's original dimensions, you can scale to a known percentage and trust the result.
- If the sequence frame size differs from the asset's natural size, right-click the asset in the Project panel, choose Modify, then Interpret Footage, and set the frame size so Premiere Pro does not silently resample the image.
Because the export is a real PNG with a real alpha channel, the rounded corners composite correctly over any underlying video without a colored fringe or a halo. Existing transparent pixels in the source remain available within the clipped shape, which matters if the original logo already had a soft drop shadow or a feathered edge built into the alpha.
Comparing Your Options for Rounded Image Corners
Different rounding workflows make sense for different situations. The table below compares the most common options a Premiere Pro editor will reach for.
| Method | Best for | Keeps source resolution | Needs upload | Output transparency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round Image Corners (browser) | Quick, repeatable rounding of logos and callouts for Premiere Pro | Yes, same size PNG | No, runs in the current tab | Yes, transparent corners |
| Premiere Pro mask on a still | One-off curve inside an existing sequence | Yes | No | Yes, but tied to the project |
| Photoshop or Affinity export | Layered source files and per-corner control | Yes | No | Yes, full alpha |
| After Effects rounded corners | Animated rounded shapes and motion graphics | Yes | No | Yes, but requires AE in the pipeline |
If you are working inside After Effects on the same project and want a per-corner radius with animation, the dedicated workflow for that editor is documented separately in the After Effects rounding guide.
When a Different Method Makes More Sense
Round Image Corners is a focused tool, and that focus shows up in a few places where you should reach for something else.
- The tool applies one equal radius to all four corners. If you need a different radius on each corner, build the shape in a layered editor such as Photoshop, Affinity Photo, or Sketch and export the alpha from there.
- The tool clips a rectangle. If you need a circle, an oval, or a free-form shape, use a dedicated circle crop or a vector path inside a layered editor.
- The output is a PNG rebuilt from decoded pixels, so the source's EXIF metadata is not preserved by the canvas export. If you need the original capture metadata, keep the untouched source file on disk and rely on the rounded PNG only for the visual.
- Because a JPEG source is decoded and re-encoded as PNG, the output byte size can grow. If the rounded asset is going into a tightly sized email attachment, run the result through a separate compressor after rounding.
- The tool handles one image at a time. For bulk rounding, run the tool repeatedly with the same radius, or script the same canvas approach in your own pipeline using the same primitives browsers expose for clipping, which are documented on MDN's CanvasRenderingContext2D.roundRect reference.
For the common case of a single logo, callout, or lower-third that needs rounded corners before it lands in a Premiere Pro sequence, the browser tool covers the workflow without adding another paid application to the project pipeline. The result is a transparent PNG with a known radius that you can reuse across sequences, hand off to a colleague, or rebuild in a few seconds if the design changes.