Applying a Drop Shadow

- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to infuse an image with depth using a layer effect, specifically, a Drop Shadow. And while I'll be demonstrating layer effects, mostly on shape and text layers, don't be thinking that's all they're good for. They actually work on any layers that have boundaries associated with them. So in other words, areas of opacity, and areas of transparency. For example, take this frame layer right here. Notice that it sports an FX icon on the right side of the panel, and that tells us that it includes effects.

To see what they are, I'll click on this little down-pointing arrowhead to reveal the fact that we have a total of three layer effects in all. Now to see their contribution, I'll go ahead and right click on the FX icon in order to bring up a pop-up menu, and I'll choose Clear Layer Style. And you're going to see the words "layer style" a lot. What they are is not the same thing as a layer effect. A single layer style includes many effects and blend settings working together. And so notice as soon as I choose Clear Layer Style, we end up getting rid of all three of the effects, and all that we're left with is two flat blue rectangles.

But if I press control-Z, or command-Z on a Mac, to undo that deletion, then you can see that that layer style, which includes both the three layer effects as well as some additional blend settings, makes all the difference in the world. So what I'm going to do here, just to offset this text a little bit, I'm going to add a Drop Shadow behind it by clicking on the Peach layer at the top of the stack, and then I'll drop down to the FX icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and click on it to reveal a list of specific layer effects.

Now notice these effects are listed along with these blending options in the order that they're applied, so, in other words, down here at the bottom of the stack is the Drop Shadow, which is actually applied behind the text, and up here at the top of the stack is Bevel and Emboss. So the thing to bear in mind is Outer Glow and Drop Shadow appear behind the layer. Everything else appears on top of the layer. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and choose Drop Shadow in order to bring up the enormous Layer Style dialog box, which, as I say, gives you access to every single one of the effects as well as your blending options.

And I'm going to go ahead and click on Reset to Default. It's a very good idea not to click on Make Default at this point, but you may need to click Reset to Default just so that you and I are starting from similar positions. Now notice that the Blend mode is set to Multiply by default in order to create a dark shadow, so that way if you dial in a different color, whether it's black or otherwise, it's going to darken everything behind it. And to make this extremely obvious, I'm just going to go ahead and crank the opacity value up to 100%, and then I'll click on this black swatch as well in order to bring up the Color Picker dialog box.

Now I'm not a big fan of black shadows. They're very popular, a lot of people just default to them. But you're better off using a color that's either found inside the image, or complementary to that color. So what I'm going to do is move my cursor out here into the image window, and just sort of click and drag around, and you can see that we've got a ton of colors at work here. So in the end, as opposed to really relying on a sampled color, I decided to go with a hue value of 30 degrees, which is actually very close to the last color I sampled, and then I set the saturation value to 50%, and I took the brightness value down to 20%.

So typically, when you're working with low brightness settings, you want to crank up the saturation, because otherwise, you're going to end up with a very low saturation color indeed. And you can see, even with 50% saturation, this is a pretty grim-looking brown, but it's going to work out nicely inside this composition. Alright, so I'll go ahead and click OK in order to apply that change. You have control over the angle, if you want to modify that, and that's going to be the angle that the light's coming in at, so the shadow's going to go off in the opposite direction, just bear in mind.

We also have this Use Global Light check box, I'll tell you how that works in the next movie. Right now, though, we're going to crank up this Distance value, which is how far away that shadow is. I'm going to go ahead and take it up to 10 pixels, let's say, and then I'm going to tab down to the Size value, and when you're first using it, it looks as if the Size value is actually controlling how blurry that shadow is. So when you go with a big Size value, you get a very blurry shadow, when you go with a little Size value, you get a tight shadow.

But there's more to it than that. Notice if I crank this guy up, I'll just take him to some random big value here, 76 pixels. Notice we also have this Spread option, and what the Spread does is it fills in the shadow. So if you take it all the way up to 100%, you're going to get a hard-edge shadow according to your Size value. If that's not what you want, then you can take your Spread value down in order to fill it in, say, to the tune of 20%. And then, I'll go ahead and tab down to my Size value and take it down to 30 pixels, so that we have a fairly tight-looking shadow.

Now we also have the option of adding a little bit of noise if you want to, or you can change the contour of that shadow. We're going to be discussing how contours work in a future movie. They're a little more complicated, and you don't typically put a lot of thought into them where drop shadows are concerned. Now at this point, I think the shadow's a little bit too dark, so I'm going to take that opacity value down to 77%, like so, and then I'll go ahead and click OK in order to apply that effect. And as you can see, the text now looks as if it's hovering above the background and casting a shadow onto it.

Meanwhile, you can see over here inside the Layers panel, that we have a new Drop Shadow item inset below the Peach layer. And so you can test how we'll it's working for you by turning that eyeball off or turning it back on. And if for whatever reason you want to modify your drop shadow, all you have to do is double-click on the words Drop Shadow to bring back up the Layer Style dialog box. In my case, though, I'm pretty happy with what I've got, so I'll just cancel out. And that's how you apply a common, everyday, ordinary Drop Shadow in order to create a rather extraordinary effect here inside Photoshop.