As soon as you start looking for drop shadows, you'll find them everywhere: in magazines, television ads, Web sites, and in every other form of media you can imagine. Everyone is discovering that as soon as you put a shadow behind some text or an image, it takes on added dimension that can really make it pop forward into view. It's a nice and easy special effect for giving something more visual weight and making people pay attention. Drop shadows are a layer style rather than a filter, so you can apply them before or after you rasterize the type.
The following are some tips for effectively using drop shadows:
Don't use them all over the place! If you use too many shadows, everything pops forward equally, and you lose the benefit of using shadows to draw attention to one particular object.
Make sure that all your shadows look alike! If you use shadows on multiple objects in the same area, make sure that the shadows all go the same way, and make sure that the depth of the shadow is appropriate. If the shadows are all different and haphazard, people will notice.
Don't make the shadows too dark. It's easy to go overboard and create deep, saturated shadows that overwhelm what's supposed to be getting all the attention: the foreground image. Keep shadows light and subtle. Figure 17.8 shows what can go wrong (and right).
Photoshop includes a powerful and easy drop-shadow function, along with the Glow, Bevel, Emboss, Satin, and Overlay functions, that will do wonders for type and graphics alike. You will find these effects in the Layer
Try it YourselfCreating a Drop Shadow for Text Follow along to create a cool drop shadow.
|
Drop Shadows Should Drop
|
Drop shadows can be tricky. When it looks right, you know it. Trust your eyes to tell you what looks realistic and what looks fake, and be willing to experiment with settings. Try making your shadow twice as blurred as your original setting, or twice as far offset. You might be surprised!
Of course, drop shadows don't have to occur just over white or solid-color backgrounds. You can have a drop shadow fall over a texture, an image, or anything else that strikes your fancy.
Try it YourselfHour 11, "Layers."Figure 17.12. The original image before drop shadows. I've attached the Layers palette so that you can see the separate layers. | |
2. | Add a shadow to the text first, by following the steps in the previous section (see Figure 17.13). If the background and the lettering are similar colors or values, consider adding a bit of outer glow as well. Figure 17.13. A drop shadow applied to the text.Notice how you can actually see the texture of the background right through the new shadow. The result is a pleasant, realistic effect. You can make even more of the background show through by adjusting the Opacity slider in the Layers palette. Give it a try. |
3. | Now create some depth in the background itself. I'll start by adding a drop shadow to the baby layer. Then I'll scale the effect (choose Layer Figure 17.14. Drop shadows at work.Notice how the text casts a shadow on the baby and the bed, and the baby in turn casts a shadow on the background. |
Tasteful TypographyThere are thousands of typefaces available. Buy them in CD-ROM collections, download them online, use the ones that come with other applications, and so on. Trying out wild typefaces can be so much fun that you might lose sight of the goalto communicate. Before committing to a design, print out a sample page and hold it up at full arm's length. If you can't read it easily, maybe even with your reading glasses removed, try to determine why and consider tweaking the design. It might be a simple matter of making the type larger or giving the lines of type more space (leading). You might need to rethink your background or add an outline. A drop shadow might helpor might make matters even worse. Try combinations of different type and image treatment. |