CDWS Digital Media : Resources

Tutorials: Creating a Realistic Drop Shadow

This tutorial will show you how to create realistic drop shadows for figures.

In this example, we will use the deer and create a drop shadow for it. In order to create a drop shadow, you must first cut the deer out of it's background.

After you have cut out the deer, drag and drop it into your document that already contains a background image. The deer will now be on a new layer.

Resize the deer to fit in the background. Determine the direction that the sun should be shining. Your drop shadow needs to fall in the correct direction for your background (I am going to pretend that the sun is coming from behind the deer).

Make sure that you are on the deer's layer. In the layers palette, click on the Add a Layer Style button at the bottom of the palette. You will see a flyout menu, choose Drop Shadow.

This will open the Layer Style palette. Here can you adjust the settings for the appearance of your drop shadow. I will accept the default settings, and click OK. This will apply a drop shadow to the deer. This shadow is not correct for showing a cast shadow, or one the fall across the ground, but it gives you a starting place.

In the layers palette, on the deer's layer, right click on the "F" in the little circle. From this fly out menu, choose Create Layer.

Since I have decided that the shadow should go in front of the deer, I will need to transform the shadow to more realistically represent a cast shadow.

Make sure you are on the correct layer (the shadow layer) and choose Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. This will make the shadow go in the opposite direction since a shadow goes from the feet away from the body. Move the shadow so that the feet touch the feet of the deer.

Go to Edit / Free Transform You will now see a bounding box around the shadow. You may need to zoom out of the document in order to see the entire bounding box. While holding down the control key, grab the bottom-middle anchor of the bounding box to move the shadow in the correct direction. Hit the enter key to apply the transformation.

Command-click (Control-click on PC) on the shadow's layer to get a selection around the shadow. Now choose the gradient tool. Apply a black & white gradient to the shadow. Drag the gradient from the deer feet to the deer head. This will give you the appearance of a real shadow that is stronger (darker) near the body but lighten as it moves away from the deer. When you are satisfied with the appearance of the gradient, deselect the selection Select > Deselect (the marching ants).

Finally you will need to apply a blur to the shadow since rarely does a shadow have hard edges. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. This will give you some control over the appearance of a shadow. Move the Amount slider until you are satisfied with the blur. Choose OK. Lock the deer and shadow layers together so that they will move together if you need to move the deer's location.