Make a Shadow

Software: Ulead PhotoImpact 8 (but will work in most other versions)

Title: Make a Shadow

Skill Level: Beginner

	1. Basic Shadow Open a new image—color white, whatever size you like to play with. Path Drawing Tool, draw a 3D shape, any shape, any color. With your new object selected, right-click and choose Shadow. The box shown will appear in your workspace. Check the box next to Shadow, accept the defaults and click OK. Voilà, you have a shadowed object!
	2. Color The default color is black, and for many uses it's your best choice. But you do have a choice! Here, I chose a color from the object I was shadowing. I did this by right-clicking the color box in the Shadow box and choosing Eyedropper. I clicked the Eyedropper on an area along the edge of my star, clicked okay and okay again. I then had the star you see at left, on top. The trick to making this work, for most applications, is to match a color from your graphic, as I did above. Then right-click, click Shadow. In the Shadow dialog box, right-click on the color box and from the menu that appears, click on Windows Color Picker. Then, click your mouse on a considerably darker version of the same color. See the arrow in this pic. Try it out, see how it looks. You can always go back and try a lighter or darker color. Now the star has a normal-looking shadow with just a hint of coordinating color.
	3. Lighting & Direction Take a look at these two pics of Spot. The shadows are pointing in different directions. One looks okay, one doesn't, but why? Look at the light source, by seeing where the light hits her coat. The shadow on the left is coming from the same direction as the light, and that won't fly in real life. But the shadow in the right-hand picture is on the opposite side from the light, which makes sense. The X-offset and Y-offset change the placement of the shadow in relation to the object. Adjust these to see what happens. Angle and Perspective come into play when you choose one of the last two styles of shadow (as shown in the Spot photo). With any of these, try the shadow first at the default settings, then play around with the settings (PI will not blow up if you do that!) and see how it changes the shadow.
	4. Transparency, Size, & Soft edge These all affect the visibility and look of your shadow. Transparency is how see-through or opaque your shadow is. The examples are 45% and 75%. Size is how big in relation to your object the shadow is. In this example I've use 90% and 110%. Soft Edge is how feathered the edge of the shadow is. Here I've used the default 10 pixels and then 5 pixels—you can see how much more defined the example using 5 is.
	5. Split Shadow With your object selected, right-click and click on Split Shadow. This makes the shadow an editable object. Here I've used the transparency example from above, split the shadow and moved it to the side.
	6. Textures Once you've split the shadow from the object, you can treat it as any other object. You can fill it using the Bucket Fill (Edit>Fill) with colors, gradients, textures, or images. You'll get very different effects depending on the fill you use and the characteristics of the shadow itself. The top shadow is filled with a background tile, the bottom with a magic gradient. You can even use the shadow-object in a completely different graphic, without the original object. They make a neat background for a graphic you've made.
	7. A Simple Frame 1. Open a photo and resize if necessary to your desired finished size. 2. Right-click, click All; right-click, click Border. In the box that pops up, enter 20 for Border width (or whatever works for your picture), click Inward and Box. Soft edge 0. Click OK. 3. Right-click, click Convert to Object. 4. Right-click, click Shadow. Choose the all-around shadow, third from the right. Play with the remaining settings to suit your taste. You will need to set Shadow size at 97 or thereabouts to make it show on the inside of the frame. At this stage you might like to apply some sort of an effect on the frame object. 5. When you're happy with it, Merge All. 6. For display purposes, another shadow might be nice. Right-click, click All; right-click, click Convert to Object; apply a shadow. I used the first shadow sample and these settings for the look opposite: 5;5;70;10;100.
I hope you've found this tutorial helpful. Have fun with it! Any questions or comments, please drop me a mail :) Copyright © 2003-2005 All Rights Reserved Site created & maintained by The BearMistress