From the course: Photoshop Masking and Compositing: Fundamentals

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Blending image elements

Blending image elements - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop Masking and Compositing: Fundamentals

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Blending image elements

In this exercise, we're going to add a Drop Shadow, we'll paint in a couple of other effects, and then we'll blend the nameplate with its photographic background. I've saved my progress as Gradient nameplate.psd and let's start things off by adding that Drop Shadow. With the nameplate layer selected, drop down to the fx icon at the bottom of the panel and choose Drop Shadow. Now by default, the color the Drop Shadow is black, which is really what you're looking for especially if you're trying to blend an image with an existing background. Your better approach is to go ahead and click on that Color Swatch to bring up the Color Picker dialog box and then lift a color from the background by clicking with the Eyedropper tool inside the image window. In my case, I ended up coming up with a Hue value of about 30 degrees, a Saturation of about 65%, and a Brightness of 15%. Another school of thought has it that your better option is to apply a complementary color is the Drop Shadow in which…

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