Lesson: Drop Shadows

[alcina]

OK, I have to thank Tortuga at DDN for helping me with this as I only learned how today! This is in Photoshop CS...

1) open the picture you want to have the drop shadow effect
2) Layer -> Duplicate Layer
3) Make your DUPLICATE layer active -> Image -> Canvass Size -> add 30 or so pixels to each dimension (you can adjust this to whatever you want and crop later)
You will now have your image surrounded by a white box

4) Make ORIGINAL layer active
5) Edit -> Fill -> choose your colour. If you are using this on your web page choose the exact same colour as your background.

 

[alcina]

6) Make your background copy layer active -> Layer -> Layer Style -> Drop Shadow


7) Play with the dial to move the shadow around; play with the sliders to change the size, opacity and other specs to taste


8) Crop if you want to.


Ta-da! Hope this helps...it was way easier than the way I was trying to do it before. Have fun!

You can use these same steps for Bevels, Embossing etc, too, as they are all in the Layer -> Layer Style menu

 

[diversteve]

There are 3rd Party plug-ins for Photoshop that do the same thing in one quick step.

Two that I use are AlienSkin's Eyecandy Shadowlab and
Extensis PhotoTools PhotoCast Shadow.

Either of these allow you to simply draw a selection box in a preview window to create the drop shadow, specify the size, color, blur and opacity level then you just click accept to create the dropshadow. Takes about 5 seconds per image, which is convenient.

Links to demo sites/purchase info:

http://www.extensis.com/en/products/product_family.jsp?locale=en_US&id=1020

http://www.alienskin.com/ec4k/ec4000_filters.html

About the expensive part, unfortunately Extensis now chooses to bundle PhotoCast Shadow as part of their $499 Photo Imaging Suite. You used to be able to get it separately. AlienSkin sells EyeCandy 4000 for $169. Both of them have all sorts of interesting filters included in the price.

regards,

 

[alcina]

Good info, if too expensive for my blood!

I should have mentioned - you can create an action to suit in Photoshop so you don't have to repeat the steps each time!