Add rounded corners and a shadow to a Mac screenshot

The window shadow is not the finish you want

macOS can already add a shadow. Press Shift Command 4, then Space, then click a window, and the capture includes the system window shadow on a transparent background. That looks fine on a light page and breaks on a dark one, where the transparent margin and the soft shadow disappear or clip.

A deliberate plate is different. It sits the capture on a solid or gradient backdrop with a known padding, a chosen corner radius, and a shadow that reads the same wherever the image is pasted. That predictability is the whole point.

Doing it by hand

In Preview you can round corners with a shaped selection, and in a design tool like Figma you can add a corner radius and a drop shadow layer. Both give you precise control, and both are slow enough that the result drifts between screenshots as you eyeball the values each time.

By hand is right for a one-off hero image. It is the wrong tool for the fifteen screenshots a release note or a support thread actually needs.

Doing it the same way every time

Clip 4 Breakfast applies a fixed padding, corner radius, and shadow to every capture through one shortcut, so consistency is the default rather than something you maintain by hand. The capture returns to the clipboard framed and ready to paste, processed on your Mac, with the raw version kept in history so you can reframe it later.

The padding, corner radius, and shadow are adjustable in Settings, Screenshots, so you set the look once and every screenshot after that matches it.

Keep the corners readable

A corner radius should suit the content. Too much rounding starts to clip real interface at the edges of an app window, which is worse than no rounding at all. Keep the shadow subtle as well; a heavy shadow competes with the screenshot instead of lifting it. The goal is a capture that looks placed, not decorated.