Adding and Editing Drop Shadows


Lightroom has the ability to add soft drop shadows behind your photos with just one click. However, what if you don't like the direction your shadow is casting? Or what if you think the shadow is too soft (or not soft enough), or it's not close enough to the photo (or it needs to be further away), or it's too dark (or too light)? Do you see where I'm going with this? That's right, although you add the shadow with one click, you're surely going to want to mess with it once you've added it. Here's how.

Step One

As long as your photos don't take up the whole slide, you'll be able to add a shadow behind your photo that casts onto your Backdrop. You do this by turning on the Cast a Shadow Behind Images checkbox (as shown here) in the Image Settings panel. There are four controls. Opacity determines how dark your shadow looksthe lower the number the lighter (and more transparent) your shadow will appear. Offset determines how far away the shadow will appear from the photo. The Radius slider controls how soft the shadow will be (the higher the number, the softer the shadow), and Angle determines where the light source is coming from, which determines which direction the shadow falls.

Step Two

The default shadow is fairly hard-edged, fairly dark, and appears quite close to the photo itself (as shown here). By the way, as a rule of thumb, the closer the shadow appears to the photo, the closer the photo is to the background. So if you move the shadow farther away, it makes the photo appear as though it is farther above the background.

Step Three

Generally, I like drop shadows to be softer and a little further away. I also lower the opacity quite a bit because I like the shadow to be so subtle that you barely notice it's there. In fact, if the person doesn't actually notice the shadow, I like it best. I feel like it should create a subtle depth, and not really be part of the composition. But hey, that's just me. So, if you feel like I do (and Peter Frampton does), then increase the Radius (to make the shadow softer), increase the Offset (to move it farther away), and lower the Opacity (to make it lighter), as shown here.

Step Four

Another look you might try is to turn off the white stroke around the photo (as shown here) by turning off the Stroke Photo Border checkbox that appears above the Shadow controls. This makes your shadow stand out a little more while still maintaining a decent degree of subtlety.



The Adobe Lightroom eBook for Digital Photographers
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers
ISBN: B001FA0MWK
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 71
Authors: Scott Kelby

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