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Shadow Files: The Basics
- On March 12, 2010
- By One Little Bird
- In Scrapbooking, Tutorials
101
As of May 2011 I finalized a self-paced project in cooperation with Big Picture Classes and The Daily Digi called “Me and My Shadow” which takes the basic techniques that I outline here to the next level – the next stratosphere, really! It’s this tutorial on steroids.This partnership gave me the opportunity to provide video demonstrations using a wide variety of elements as I build a page from the ground up, and it also includes printable reference guides. My blog tutorial here will continue to be offered free of charge, in perpetuity (that means forever!) – so don’t worry! The online course is the next step for those of you who really want to go “down the rabbit hole” with me and become a total geek for Drop Shadows.
This is a post I’ve been working on for a while. My most asked question in digital scrapbooking is how I shadow and/or whether or not I could do layer styles or actions of my shadows to sell in my store. If I had one (or a dozen) tried-and-true consistent ways of shadowing I would give it a shot. The fact of the matter is, though, I have no magic formula for shadowing an element. It always depends on the colors, where it’s located on the page, what’s near it, what the element is made of, etc.
I do have some jumping off points, though, and I’ll gladly share them (for free!) for Photoshop users here on my blog. You may be able to easily adapt these to other programs, but the screenshots and instructions herein are from Photoshop CS4. There’s nothing I do that isn’t also available in earlier versions of Photoshop, it’s pretty basic.
I’m no rocket scientist. For the sake of brevity, though, I’m going to assume you already know where all the buttons are for adding drop shadows and how to bring up the right-click menu and such. If you’re to the point in scrapbooking where you’re working on your shadow realism, chances are you know those things already.
I’m going to start with this sad little unshadowed flower on a piece of light kraft paper. Frown with me, everyone. Poor little sad flower laying there with no depth. I chose a flower because it has enough variables to learn from, and the kraft paper because shadows show up really well against it.
Ok, now get ready for an intense, mind-blowing shadow revelation here, folks. You may want to sit down with a towel underneath you for this one. For my drop shadow settings the most important part as far as I’m concerned is to change the blend mode from “Multiply” (default) to “Linear Burn”. This makes all the difference for me.
I’ll give you a bit of technical mumbo jumbo to explain why I prefer this mode, then you go ahead and decide whether you want to use it or not. Multiply “multiplies” the average color intensity of the top layer with the average intensity of the bottom layer. This produces darker colors within the composite image and creates contrast. Linear Burn also produces darker colors within the composite image, however the main difference is that Linear Burn breaks the bottom layer down into its individual color channels (for scrapbooking those are your R(ed), G(reen), and B(lue) channels) to determine the degree of darkness for each pixel in the top layer. Channel information for each color is used and the darkest color’s intensity is increased by a certain degree. So your shadows have more variation throughout, depending on all the colors beneath them.
If you decide to stick with “Multiply” then there’s no shame in it. However, if you switch to “Linear Burn” don’t come crying to me when your shadows take on a new level of AWESOME.
On my pages my light source is usually set to the upper right corner – at or around 42 to 45 degrees on the little spinny box. I shadow things like stitches and staples at 90 degrees with my light source coming straight down from the top of the page. My shadow color (totally subjective, whatever floats your boat) is #2c1901 which is a really deep orange. It’s almost black, to the naked eye it’ll look black.
The Linear Burn blend mode tends to produce darker shadows in general, so if you’ve been using Multiply at about 70% opacity, you should expect that your opacity levels will drop a bit with the change in blend mode. Tinker around with them until it looks about right to the naked eye. What I tend to do is find the point where it looks okay to me, THEN I move the opacity up by another 5% or more. (So if I fall on 35%, I’ll actually move it up to about 40%) because I err on the side of them being too dark and I recognize my “inner wuss”. You know, the wuss that tells me “No no! That’s too dark! Everyone is going to laugh at you!” Move it up another 5% and tell that inner wuss to stuff it.
Make sure your “Global Light” box is unchecked. Mine is always unchecked. Then if you monkey with a shadow later on down the road it won’t affect all of your other shadows.
The sliders are going to vary by element. Here’s a quick (and very general!) idea of approximate values:
So at this point you’ll have a fairly static, uniform shadow for your element. If it’s an item that’s fairly solid (acrylic pieces, sequins, etc) I’ll usually leave it as a uniform shadow. Those things don’t have a lot of “flex” on your page so the shadow would naturally be very precise.
For items like flowers, leaves, ribbons, bows, etc. you’re going to want to mess these shadows up a bit. In real life they wouldn’t necessarily lay perfectly on the same plane on your page. So this is where you’ll right click on the shadow in your Layers Palette and choose “Create Layer”.
Hey and look, someone magically named my layers for me! Haha. You’ll notice that on your new separated shadow layer, the blend mode is still “Linear Burn” and the Fill is set to the percentage you specified within the drop shadow dialogue. So you can continue to tinker with that Fill setting as your page develops if you find that you need to change the strength of the shadow down the line.
People ask me whether I use the Warp tool to alter my shadows, and there are some instances (very few) where I do. Usually just with skinny frames or small pieces of paper. My tool of choice is the Smudge Tool (R). You’ll find it over in your toolbar just beneath the Paint Bucket. Click and hold it down to see all the options (or press Shift + R a few times to cycle through them without using your mouse).
Up on the top select a large, soft brush. Something substantial. You’re going to want to move more than a couple of pixels here. My image above is pretty poor, but I selected a 300px brush with a hardness of 0%, and then set the strength (along the top bar) to 50%.
You can adjust that Strength slider depending on your needs. Basically the stronger the Smudge Tool is set, the more exact your move is. SOMETIMES that means you can end up with “lumpy” shadows if you use it at 100% strength. If you move the Strength down to about 50% you’ll gently “smudge” your shadow in the direction that you drag the brush. Just like the tool says. Truth in advertising!
Now you’ll just return to your Drop Shadow layer, and gently (no sudden moves!) drag the Smudge brush over the edges of your shadow – pushing and pulling them around until you achieve the desired effect.
The reason I prefer this over the Warp tool is that it’s a little more organic. A little more subtle. The Warp bounding box gives you about 20 points where you can adjust the shadow, and those points never seem to be exactly where I want them to be. With the Smudge Tool if I just want to bump the petal of a flower out a little bit, I can do it easily without affecting the rest of the shadow.
This is a much happier flower. I’ve zoomed in on it because it deserves a close-up with a shadow like that:
You can consider this a job well done at this point. You’ve messed your shadow up a bit, made it a little less refined. You’ve unleashed your shadow’s liberal, tree-hugging, fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants unpredictability. But if you want to take it to the NEXT level. Read on. Because after this, your shadow will be so free-spirited you’ll be able to buy it a Prius and teach it how to make its own granola bars.
I want you to select that Drop Shadow layer, Duplicate it (right click then “duplicate layer” or CTRL + J). Now you have two identical drop shadows and they’re going to look a skosh dark just for a few seconds. Select the bottom shadow layer.
And then run a Gaussian Blur Filter on it (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) with a radius of about 30 pixels (variable, mess with this to your liking)
With the blurred shadow layer still selected, gently bump it 
(using your arrow keys) a few times down and a few times to the left (or in whatever direction you shadow) to move it further away from center. And adjust the Fill Opacity down to about 20%. You want it to be fairly light, it’s a secondary shadow. Then move up one layer to your non-blurred shadow layer, and adjust the Fill Opacity down on that one by about 20% (if you were at 45%, move it down to 25-30%).
Below you’ll see the slight difference this makes in the depth of your shadow. The one on the left is just one shadow layer that we tweaked with the Smudge Tool. The one on the right side has the two shadow layers, with the Gaussian Blur one bumped out about 10 steps to the left and 10 steps down (I use the arrow keys to do this).
The absolute last step I usually take after shadowing an element is to select the layers for the original element and the two shadows, right clicking in my layer palette and selecting “Link Layers”. Many times I’ll also “Group Layers” immediately after that to keep everything together when moving it around. These are just general housekeeping steps.
For the sake of this little How To I used the flower, but the same dual-shadow technique can take a lot of elements from “not bad” to “Wow, that looks touchable!” Buttons almost always benefit from a second shadow layer, I always shadow them using the techniques in this post. The same goes for curly, swirly ribbons. On those I go a little more wild with the Smudge Tool and mess the shadows up REAL GOOD by pulling the shadows for the “high” parts of the ribbon pretty far away from the original image. Bows are another one that, at the very least, you need to tweak with the Smudge Tool. Depending on where you have the bow on your page (close to the background or layered up and away) there’s sometimes no point in putting a second shadow layer on them. Nevertheless, you’re not out anything if you try it.
My hope is that this at least gives you one new tool in your arsenal. Like I said in the beginning, there’s no magic bullet for shadowing every element, it all comes down to tinkering. The more you tinker, the more commonplace these things become and the faster you fly through them.
Shadow Like Me Layer Styles
I’ve gone ahead and created Layer Styles of my most-used shadow settings and they’re for sale in my shop – so if you want to save yourself a few steps and apply some shadows in a jiffy, then please check them out. They’ve been tested in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and they’ll fast-forward you through the first couple of steps in this tutorial. Happy Scrapping!
liz
you’re my hero. hands down the best tutorial ever. I love the mindblowing warnings too.
Tali
You are the coolest. I read and followed along even though my piddly PSE doesn’t allow for this kind of mind-blowing shadowing. These look amazing!
Sarah
This is super fantastic wonderful! Thanks for sharing your secrets.
Janice
OMG! My heart is pounding I’m so excited by this tutorial. I want to go home and scrap RIGHT NOW!
Jude
Thanks! I’ve been suffering from warp envy for ages and have cobbled together ways of fiddling with shadows in gimp – will definitely give the smudge tool a try
Denise
This is hands-down “THE BEST” article I have ever read on shadows. Off to play
Thanks a bunch!
Lia Lotito
you totally rock with this tutorial!!! thank you!
Nathy
Amazing article,thank you so much
Carolee
Very cool tutorial. Loved the details on the secondary shadows.
MariaT
that was fantastic, thank you!
Sarah
I just was shadowing ribbon and couldn’t for the life of me get it to look right, I think the smudge tool is going to be a new best friend.
Rebecca
Amazing!!! I use PSP, so I know things will be different, but I think you gave me some tools I can work with! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
danielle young
wow!! thank you SO much for sharing this! really awesome tutorial!
blurooferika
Thanks for taking the time to put this all down in a thorough, easy-to-follow manner, Peppermint. Your fan club—and the many interested beginners who happen upon your blog—greatly appreciate it. Have a great weekend!
Tiki
Thanks for the tut! Watch the gallery for my mind numbing shadows in the future
Lynnette
Best.shadow.tutorial.ever. And seriously beyond hilarious as well, haha. Thank you so much for sharing your tricks!
Maegan
I just found your blog through the Paisley Press blog and I’m so glad I did. You are hilarious! LOL! This tutorial is AMAZING. THANK YOU!
Susan
thanks for the amazing tutorial!! I’m going to try and be this cool with all my shadows
dana
peppermint -you rock my socks! thanks so much for the fab tutorial
cannot wait to try 
Nicole
bookmarking this! thanks!
sue.falstaff
Amazing … thank you!!!
Dagmar
NOW I get it!!!
You are awesome, Peppermint!!
Kelly
This is awesome Peppermint! Thanks so much…I can’t wait to try it out!!
Diana Martin
What an awesome tut Peppermint!!! A long over due congrats on your truly amazing designs xo
Scrapenherbe
Thank you very much !!!
Fantastic tutorial !!!
Amanda
AMAZING! Thank you so much for sharing this. I can’t wait to try it out.
mrshobbes
Shadowing Yoda, you are! This is just brilliant! I totally can’t wait to have my shadows own Prius-es and make their own granola bars!
marianne
OMG!!! you’re too funny
… THANK you for this … gonna go rock some linear burn shadows now 
Raji Sriram
Thank you so much!!
Tracy
Thank you so much for this tutorial. You ROCK Peppermint! You are so awesome for taking the TIME to document this process for those of us who didn’t KNOW. I myself am much more enlightened for this tutorial, thank you!
Sabrina
Thank you for sharing this wonderful tutorial with us!
ViVre
I thank you 1000 times!
It always seemed a secret only know by a happy few. And you SHARED it!!!
Be sure I gonna use it!
Kelly
Awesome tutorial! I can’t wait to try it out. This is my goal for the year to start paying attention to my shadows and spend more time making them look nice.
Susan
Fabulous tutorial! I have done some of the steps before but never all of them and not as consistently as I should. I never thought of a secondary shadow. Thanks so much!
LaRissa
This is AWESOME, P!! Thanks so much!
Nicole
I tried your tut today, thanks to a recommendation to check out your post on our forums. You can see my before and after here: http://www.thedigichick.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29570
I’m shocked and in love with all these tips. This is hands down the best shadow tut I’ve read to date and I’ve checked out a ton of them. Thank you so much!
Heather T.
Wow, what a wayyyyyyyyy cool tutorial! Thanks for sharing!
Unica
holy crap! I never thought I’d find a tut for shadow that seemed to make sense to me. But hold and behold here it is! Thank you soooo much!
Deb
I love learning though laughter, thanks!
Heather Prins
oh you should win an award for this brilliance! Thank you!
Davita
Thank you for the best and most brilliantly written shadow tut ever.
Patty
This is an *awesome* tutorial…thank you for taking the time to share your secrets with the rest of us…I’ve officially converted from the warp tool to the smudge tool.
Brennie
Thank you so much for taking the time to put this together. Brilliant explanation of every step, best tutorial I’ve seen. Off to get some practice
GlitterQueen
Awesomely instructive and funny tutorial! Can’t wait to try these tips.
renne
this is absolutely the BEST tutorial ever! Thank you!!
Paula Francovig
Woww, this tuto is really fantastic!!! Thank you for sharing!!!
kris
This is very informative! Never thought to use linear burn. Thanks for sharing! Since you’ve asked, do you have any tips for shadowing fabric? This seems to be the killer element for me. Thanks in advance!
Brandi
Wow Peppermint, this is AWESOME! Thanks for the tips! By the way… you should be a writer
Tronesia
Thank you for the great tutorial! Never thought about smudging the shadow layer..will have to try!!
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Dawn
Excellent tut! I don’t know what I enjoyed better your writing style or learning about drop shadows
. I’m going to link this up on my blog, hope that’s cool with you!
lynne
This is such an awesome and well-explained tutorial! thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Definite “head explosion” material!!
Ron
Thank you for this amazing tutorial! Shadows can be challenging, but you’ve presented this info clearly and understandably, with a bit of humor, too! My own digi-shadows will improve thanks to your gracious sharing!!
Chickie
After enjoying your scatter tute, I had to venture on over to your drop shadow version of CSI for scrappers.. (that stands for Complete Shadow Information). This is totally shadowrific. I have a request for your fantastic tutortials… a pdf version for downloading! I love to print good tute’s and keep them in a notebook for future reference, and yours would be a very welcome addition to my collection. Thanks for the great info!
Cammy
This is a fantastic tutorial and I have proof! I followed the steps and adjusted the settings where necessary with a little red flower on a tan background. I then used two other shadows actions that I have been using for ages. I placed all three flowers together and had my husband give his opinion. Now, he knows nothing about Photoshop, blend modes, and smudge tools. I just asked him to tell me which one he thought looked the most realistic. You got it! He said the flower with the shadow I created from your tutorial. That’s proof enough for me. Thanks so much for sharing this great tutorial. And your explanations really made sense.
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JetjeZ
OMG, that is one awesome tutorial. Thank you so much!
Diane Morris
Thank you so much for freely sharing!!! This tutorial is great….well explained, easy to follow…..and your shadows are AWESOME!!!
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beckie
thank you for this awesome tut!! i love it!!
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terese
thanks for this one sweetie. i had to put it in my christmas countdown for today. a splendid gift to share – this link with your tutorial!
hugs, terese
patriciae
What a fantastic tutorial of drop shadows! This is the best info I’ve read on it. Thank you!!!!!!! Your flower looks beautiful and very realistic.
Jo
Very clearly explained, thanks!
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Jen
Holy s**t. I have been a web designer for years and years and have just started in digital design…this is the best tutorial I have ever read. Thank you!
AKrubygal
what a fabulous tutorial — thank you!
emily
i loved this tutorial!! i posted a link on my blog to share with others. you may have vastly improved my quality of life.
amyjo
You are a FANTASTIC tutorial writer – I’m not good at explaining things to other people, so when I find things like this, I totally share them with the people who get frustrated with me for being unable to explain clearly to them what I’m talking about
Totally sharing this with my sisters
Brenda
I was just about to sign up for your tutorial on BPS — then noticed it was only for the full photoshop version. Could you design one for us PSE users? Thanks.
Peppermint
This is a request I’ve gotten a few times, Brenda, but unfortunately I’ve never used Photoshop Elements – so I wouldn’t have any idea on how to teach these techniques in PSE. Also a few of the tools/functions aren’t available in PSE, so that ties my hands a bit.
I know there are workarounds that other PSE users have discovered that give them a little more flexibility, but PSE is a totally different animal for me.
Kristi
I just bought your “Me and my Shadow” class at Big Picture, thinking that since the blog tutorial had covered the linear burn tip and hex color thingie, what else could there possibly be to drop shadowing? WOW–a lot more it turns out–so much so that I’ve just started and already my pages look 100% better. Such great info, and taught at a level everyone can understand! Best $10 I ever spent!
grambie
This is my first time visiting as a newsletter recipient and having a hilarious time. I just tried your tutorial in PSE, It Works! The only difference, which is minor, is that I had to manually do the blend mode change after creating the first shadow.
I am a member of digital scrapping, and I have your kit of the month. That is what led me to your blog. Love it!
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Christine
I thought I was doing okay till I read this!! It is fantastic. You are wonderful for sharing and I thank you so much. This has already changed the way I shadow as I love the smudge tool.
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frani_54
Awesome shadow tutorial, thanks for sharing! Love the humor and the end tip about linking the layers right away….
Patricia
Fabulous tutorial! Your shadowing style is gorgeous and so realistic. I already bought your style set (which rocks!) and I am planning to take your mini class since you obviously know a ton about this and I don’t, ha ha.
Carrie
After I cleaned off the brain matter from my laptop, I got busy trying your tutorial in PSP. It. is. AWESOME.
For those curious, linear burn is equivalent to multiply in PSP.
I was afraid of the smudge brush (smear in PSP) before I tired this. Now I’m afraid I’ll be smudging everything in my sight. (sorry kids) I hate the warp tool, too, so I am thankful for this clever alternative.
Thanks so much!
Bonnie
You opened my mind to different shadow options. I’m using PSE and translating these should similar–not difficult. I especially liked the Smudge Tool and Gaussian Blur. Thanks so much!!!
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Siri
Hi Peppermint!
I just did your class “Me and my Shadow” and I loved it! I´m a hybrid scrapper, but I also do some pure digi pages and I love designing products. I´ve just finished a page with loads of layers, and if it was a paper page it would have been very dimentional. I created it using the size and distance technique you used in the class, but it leaves me with a question.
I´ve got 10 chunky layers between my background paper and my top layer. (Collagd papers and tags) Even though the top layer is “far” away from the background, it is not far away from layer 9. It is however overlapping both background and layer 9. Would I have to manually change each shadow to accomodate both the distance to the background and to the other layers it touches or is there an easier way to achieve a realistic shadow on LOs like this?
Thansk for the great class!
Siri
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Barb
Thank you for this awesome tutorial! And thank you for letting us post about it it on the Digital Scrapper blog!
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Lea
WOW! I have tried the tutorial at the same time as reading and what a change it makes in my page!! This tutorial is amazing and I want to thank you for finally making my ribbons look real and not just floating around on the page. I feel like I’ve reached a milestone!
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Lissa
I bought your self-paced class at BPC last year when you first offered it, but just finally got time to do it today (I’m a bit of a class junkie). Oh my goodness! I love it. I can’t believe I didn’t do it before today. I’m killing myself going back through my digi layouts to fix the shadows. They look so much more amazing. Thank you thank you thank you!!
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