| As soon as you start looking for drop shadows, you'll find them everywhere: in magazines, television ads, Web sites, and in every other form of media you can imagine. Everyone is discovering that as soon as you put a shadow behind some text or an image, it takes on added dimension that can really make it pop forward into view. It's a nice and easy special effect for giving something more visual weight and making people pay attention. Drop shadows are a layer style rather than a filter, so you can apply them before or after you rasterize the type. The following are some tips for effectively using drop shadows: -
Don't use them all over the place! If you use too many shadows, everything pops forward equally, and you lose the benefit of using shadows to draw attention to one particular object. -
Make sure that all your shadows look alike! If you use shadows on multiple objects in the same area, make sure that the shadows all go the same way, and make sure that the depth of the shadow is appropriate. If the shadows are all different and haphazard, people will notice. -
Don't make the shadows too dark. It's easy to go overboard and create deep, saturated shadows that overwhelm what's supposed to be getting all the attention: the foreground image. Keep shadows light and subtle. Figure 17.8 shows what can go wrong (and right). Figure 17.8. A too-dark shadow, a too-blurred shadow, a dark and badly positioned shadow, and one that finally gets it right. 
Photoshop includes a powerful and easy drop-shadow function, along with the Glow, Bevel, Emboss, Satin, and Overlay functions, that will do wonders for type and graphics alike. You will find these effects in the Layer  Style submenu. Remember that you can use drop shadows and other layer styles on objects as well as on type. You cant apply a layer style to anything that's not on its own layer, though. Painting on the background, and then trying to add a layer style won't work. Try it Yourself Creating a Drop Shadow for Text Follow along to create a cool drop shadow. | 1. | Create a new Photoshop document with a white background.
| | 2. | Select the Type tool and enter some words. Choose any font that appeals to you. For now, don't worry about color , kerning, or setting a baseline. Figure 17.9 shows the basic type. Figure 17.9. The original art in need of a drop shadow.  | | 3. | Choose Layer Layer Style Drop Shadow to open the Layer Style dialog box, as shown in Figure 17.10. Check the Preview box so that you can see your work as you create it. The trickiest part of this operation is getting the screen arranged so that you can see both the dialog box and the type youre working on. Figure 17.10. Applying a drop shadow in the Layer Style dialog box.  | | 4. | Set the Blend Mode to Normal, Multiply, or Darken. Otherwise, you won't see the shadow. Click in the color swatch next to the Mode menu to change the color of the shadow. This opens the Color Picker.
| | 5. | Adjust the shadow's Opacity and Angle as desired, by clicking the slider and dragging on the clock face to change the angle, or typing numbers into the boxes.
| | 6. | Set the Distance to determine how far away you want the shadow to be from the word or object. Set the Size according to the amount of shadow you want to see. Set the Spread according to how distinct you want the edges of the shadow to be. Click OK when you are happy with your drop shadow. You can still change it, of course. Until you merge the layers , you can make any changes you want. I've added a little bit of art to create the finished effect you see in Figure 17.11. (They're just a couple of shapes created with the Shape tools, filled and with drop shadows added.) Figure 17.11. Drop shadow type, with symbols and more drop shadows.  | |
Drop Shadows Should Drop  | I find that shadows often work better if they're below the original image; that is, moved down instead of up when they're offset. When the shadow falls downward, the object looks more like it's popping up. |
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Drop shadows can be tricky. When it looks right, you know it. Trust your eyes to tell you what looks realistic and what looks fake, and be willing to experiment with settings. Try making your shadow twice as blurred as your original setting, or twice as far offset. You might be surprised! Variation: Shadows on Backgrounds Of course, drop shadows don't have to occur just over white or solid-color backgrounds. You can have a drop shadow fall over a texture, an image, or anything else that strikes your fancy. Try it Yourself Placing Drop Shadows on a Background Follow these steps to apply drop shadows from text onto a background image and add depth to the background itself. | 1. | First, create the Photoshop image. I started with a photo of the World's Cutest Baby ¢. I added some type and put the baby photo on its own layer, deleting part of the background to allow a gradient to show through as a backdrop. The important thing to remember is to create a new layer for each element for which you want to have a drop shadow (see Figure 17.12). For a refresher on layers, refer to Hour 11, "Layers." Figure 17.12. The original image before drop shadows. I've attached the Layers palette so that you can see the separate layers.  | | 2. | Add a shadow to the text first, by following the steps in the previous section (see Figure 17.13). If the background and the lettering are similar colors or values, consider adding a bit of outer glow as well. Figure 17.13. A drop shadow applied to the text.  Notice how you can actually see the texture of the background right through the new shadow. The result is a pleasant, realistic effect. You can make even more of the background show through by adjusting the Opacity slider in the Layers palette. Give it a try. | | 3. | Now create some depth in the background itself. I'll start by adding a drop shadow to the baby layer. Then I'll scale the effect (choose Layer Layer Style Scale Effects) so its more in proportion to the size of the baby. Figure 17.14 shows the final version. It's also shown in the color section. Figure 17.14. Drop shadows at work.  Notice how the text casts a shadow on the baby and the bed, and the baby in turn casts a shadow on the background. | |
Tasteful Typography There are thousands of typefaces available. Buy them in CD-ROM collections, download them online, use the ones that come with other applications, and so on. Trying out wild typefaces can be so much fun that you might lose sight of the goalto communicate. Before committing to a design, print out a sample page and hold it up at full arm's length. If you can't read it easily, maybe even with your reading glasses removed, try to determine why and consider tweaking the design. It might be a simple matter of making the type larger or giving the lines of type more space (leading). You might need to rethink your background or add an outline. A drop shadow might helpor might make matters even worse . Try combinations of different type and image treatment. Remember to use "curly" quotes and apostrophes rather than the straight kind. You're setting type, not using a typewriter that has only one kind. The professionals don't use underlining very often, either. The underline habit also comes from the old manual typewriter days, when no other typographical tool was available to give emphasis to words. Use bold or italic type styles instead. |
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