Advanced Realistic Drop Shadow

Photoshop tutorials

Advanced Realistic Drop shadow

This tutorial will focus on using advanced drop shadow technique.

1. First, open a new image.  The size doesn’t matter for this tutorial.

2. Select an image of your choice to apply the drop show effect to.

(Figure 1)

2. Go—> Select—> Load selection—> Click Ok

3.With the Rectangular Marquee Tool selected (Figure 2) ,

(Figure 2)

4. Right Click—> Select Make Work Path—> Tolerance of 2.0—> Click OK

5. Now select the Pen Tool and select Add Anchor Point (Figure 3)

(Figure 3)

6. With the Anchor Point Tool selected, drag the new path to look something like this. Make this selection a little larger than your image. (Figure 3)

(Figure 3)

7. Right Click—> Make Selection to convert your new path back to a selection.

8. Go—> Layer—> New Layer—> Click OK

9. In your Layers Pallet, Drag your new layer below the image you fist added to convert to a drop shadow. (Figure 4)

(Figure 4)

.

10. With your New Layer behind your image, fill your Selection you made in (Step 8.)

11. Set your foreground color as black in your colors pallet and use Paint Bucket Tool to fill your new selection. (Figure 5)

(Figure 5)

12. Deselect the layer by re selecting the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Right Click on the image to Deselect (Figure 6) ,

(Figure 6)

12. Go—> Filter—> Blur—> Gaussian Blur

Set the blur to your liking.  Since you can preview the layer as you change the Gaussian Blur, you salt to taste.

Set the Opacity of your shadow layer to about 50% (salt to taste)  (Figure 7)

(Figure 7)

Note: Adding a border around the image help give this a realistic effect. A simple way to do this is:

13. In your Layers Pallet, Highlight your image in the Top Layer and Go—> Select —> Load Selection—> Select—> Modify—> Contract by 5.0 and click OK.

14. Create a New Layer and fill with White

Finished Product

Download the Zip File

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