Faded Drop Shadows
It’s been a while since I’ve drop shadowed anything in Photoshop, so I thought I’d share this old trick to keep my eye in and spread a little happiness. Step one, in a new document, on a new empty layer create a really super cool rectangle. Step two, duplicate the rectangle (Cmd+ J (mac), or Ctrl + J (pc)) Step three, double click you’re new layer to view the layer styles. Add a black colour overlay Step four, still in the new black rectangle layer go to filter>blur>gaussian blur, and apply a 9.0 pixel radius (well anything really just make it a bit blurry).
Step five, now move that new layer underneath your original rectangle, and you’ve got a simple drop shadow, now to make it cooler.Step six, on the shadow layer press Cmd + T, or Ctrl + T to free transform the object. Now select the warp tool from the top menu. Now pull in the top corners of the shadow to hide them.
Step seven, now change your original rectangle to the same colour as the background using colour overlay, and you’ll have a cool looking effect.
If you are using CS2 or just want a different approach, instead of warping the shadow you can select the top 1/4 or so using the marque tool, then press Ctrl + D to add a feather to the selection of say 20, then just press delete, you’ll remove part of the shadow and get a similar effect. Oh and don’t forget to do it to the bottom part of the shadow too.
Once you realise you can make your own shadow effects, better than the built photoshop ones, you can experiment and add cool peel effects to pages and a whole load of other stuff.
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