How to Create Beautiful Drop Shadows _ Reflection Shadows

Drop shadows and reflection shadows are simple design elements that add visual interest to your website, whether you’re using them as accents or as the main design element. But drop shadows and reflection shadows can be difficult to create on your own — they require careful masking techniques to place images in the right places without looking sloppy or distracting from the rest of your site’s design. Luckily, there are plenty of businesses that specialize in creating beautiful drop shadows and reflection shadows for you, so you don’t have to take the time to learn the technical skills needed to create them yourself.

What is a drop shadow?

A drop shadow is a visual effect that creates a shadow behind an object. In Photoshop, you can add a drop shadow by selecting an object and applying one of several layer styles (styles define how an element is displayed; there are many types of layer styles). There are five main types of layer styles: solid color, linear gradient, radial gradient, pattern overlay and stroke.

The basics of creating drop shadows using Photoshop

Create a duplicate layer of your image by selecting Layer > Duplicate Layer. Next, select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply a blurring radius between 3px-5px. Go back to your original layer and select Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow. Apply any desired color and click OK. You should now have a shadowed effect!

Step 1 – Choose your layer

The first step in creating a reflection or drop shadow is choosing which layer you want to add it to. Unless you’re planning on using more than one of these effects on a single image, you won’t need multiple layers.

Step 2 – Select your pen tool

First, select your pen tool. The pen tool is an excellent choice for creating shadows because it allows you to create both straight and curved shadows using a single brush. You can find it under Shape Tools > Paths.

Step 3 – Set up your options

To create a drop shadow or reflection shadow, you first need to determine where your foreground is. This will be defined by your choice of font, so choose a font and set it up. Once that’s done, we can move on to shadows. For best results with these text effects, use an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator; however, you can also get very close using MS Paint for Windows or MacPaint for Apple machines: First decide how dark you want your shadows.

Step 4 – Draw your shape

In order to create a drop shadow, you need two things: a shape and an opacity mask. We’ll be using some simple shapes, like rectangles, circles and ellipses. The trick is getting them in just the right place! Once you get that down, you can start playing around with color and how opaque your shadows are. Our next step is going to be showing how we create these shapes by hand for our design.

Step 5 – Add a new layer below your main image.

Name it Drop Shadow. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. It should be set at about 2 pixels. Change your blending mode on your drop shadow layer from Normal to Soft Light or Overlay.

Step 6 – Copy & Paste your shadow on the new layer.

If you want your shadow on a separate layer, select it by clicking inside of it with your selection tool. Now go back up to your Layer menu and choose Copy Visible. That will make a copy of all layers except for any locked or hidden ones.

Step 7 – Change the color to black.

To create realistic shadows, you’ll want to make sure all of your shadows are black. It’s easy to overlook this step and assume it should be black by default, but Photoshop will often change your color selection because it assumes it would look better with a shade of gray. So just make sure that every single shadow is actually black! It’s worth double-checking that each one is.

Step 8 – Edit out any unwanted areas.

To create your shadow, it’s important that you start with a clean piece of art. Any extra lines or areas will show up in your shadow and detract from your design. So go through and clean up any unwanted areas that you don’t want included in your final product. In most cases, you can use Photoshop’s Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to trace around each object and erase everything else, but there are a few things to keep in mind

Step 9 – Set blend mode of this layer to Overlay (50%)

This will make our new shadow appear more transparent. You may also want to adjust its opacity until you get a desired result. In my case, it’s at around 60%.

Expert Clipping

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/expertclipping

G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+expertclipping-ec

Twitter: https://twitter.com/expertclipping

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Expertclipping-ec

Contact: https://www.expertclipping.com/contact

Free quote: https://www.expertclipping.com/free-quote/

Pricing & Payments: https://www.expertclipping.com/pricing/

Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/tj5FRP3vVMbW1uzM9

Office address:

Bangladesh office:

House # 02 Section # 01 Road # 01 Mirpur-1 Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh.