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Drop Shadows 101 PDF Print
Written by Stacy Carlson   
Saturday, 04 February 2006
One key thing that any scrapper can do on a layout to make it really stand out is to understand drop shadows and how they should be used in a layout. One of the biggest mistakes that is seen on layouts is the overuse of drop shadows, or drop shadows that don’t correct display the depth of an object, and this misuse can serious make a great layout into a bad layout.

The first rule that you should always keep in your mind about drop shadows is “Is this how it would look if this were real?” If you were doing a true paper scrapbook layout, and it was in natural light, how does that drop shadow look? A good way to start building in your mind what drop shadows would look like, without having to go through the hassle of making your own real paper layout, is to go to any paper scrapbooking website and take a look at layouts that have been scanned and added.

For this tutorial, please download this zip file and unzip and have ready to go through the following steps.

It does not matter what program you are using, as the directions are generic enough to apply to any program as they are based on perception and not program settings.

1. Create a new file that is 400 x 400 in size. Background makes no difference.

2. Open GPSC_110805_b001.jpg and place this file onto your 400x400 blank image. You will have something that looks like this:



Your goal is to make this image appear as if it’s on top of a piece of paper. If you were to go find a picture in your house, and hold it up, how thick is it. If you place it on a piece of paper, how much depth would there be from the top of that picture to the bottom where it meets the paper? These are the questions you ask any time you use a drop shadow.

Because an actual photo has very little depth, it deserves a very small drop shadow.

One thing to always keep in mind is “What direction is my light coming from?” If you decide that the light is coming from the top left corner, than everything on your layout needs to have at least a right bottom drop shadow. Alternating this on a layout does not flow with how it would realistically look if it were indeed one in paper.

Play around with the drop shadow effect in your program until you get a look that is close to this:



If you really want to make a photo stand out even more, you can do an opposite drop shadow (if you did a right bottom, an opposite would be a left top) with a higher transparency setting so that there is a very faint drop shadow around the opposite side of the photo. It would look like this:



Now please open the photo corner (file: GPSC_110805_b002.png)

Take the photo corner and place it on the top left corner.

Every time you add something on top of something else, you are adding additional depth. Photo corners are typically very thing, even thinner than the photo itself, so it only gives a marginal amount of depth all by itself, so you would not give it much more of a drop shadow than you gave the photo, in fact, you should give it slightly less than the paper because the photo corner is realistically thinner than the photo. Go ahead and put less of a drop shadow on the photo corner than you did the photo.



Rotate the photo corner and move it to the top right of the image, and apply the same drop shadow, remembering to keep the direction of the shadow always in the same direction.



When you are done you have a realistically looking photo, with realistically looking photo corners with drop shadows that correct depict the depth of each item as it would look if placed on a piece of paper.
 
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