Not Your Grandma’s Drop Shadow

January 12th, 2009

Photoshop is an amazing tool! It allows us to simulate effects that once took hours to produce. It also makes us really lazy—relying on the built in filters and effects to produce overplayed visual trickery that everyone’s seen a thousand times… especially the drop shadow.

Here’s a simple techniques to make your drop shadows stand out from the static!

Step One—Prep Work

First you need to create the element you will be applying the custom drop shadow to (rectangular elements will work the best, but feel free and modify for more organic shapes). For this example I’m using a cropped photo with a white border around it. The white border is created by selecting the “Rectangle Tool” and drawing a shape layer that extends past the photo evenly on all four sides. It’s key that you use a shape layer and not pixels, as you’ll see in step three.

Step Two—Duplicate & Hide

Now that our prep work is complete we can move on to creating our killer drop shadow. Duplicate the rectangle shape layer that you created as the border to the photo, and change the fill color to black. Rename this layer “Shadow”, and make sure it is behind the border layer. Once this is completed I recommend hiding the photo & border layers, leaving only the shadow layer visible.

Step Three—Add New Anchor Point

With the “Shadow” shape layer selected switch to the “Direct Selection Tool” (the white cursor arrow—keyboard shortcut “A”). Click one of the corners of the shape layer to reveal the path’s anchor points. Now, switch the the “Pen Tool” and add a new anchor point right smack in the middle of the bottom path.

Step Four—Adjust The Curve

Now that we’ve added the new anchor point we can use the up and down arrows on the keyboard to adjust the curve of the bottom path. I moved my new point up about 25 pixels. Tip: If you hold down the shift key while using the keyboard arrows to move an element it will move it 10px per button push as opposed to just 1px.

Step Five—Move Into Position

At this point we can turn the photo and border layers back on. Once they are visible move the shadow layer down do that the curved portion begins to show below them. While you’re at it, change the layer mode to multiply, and the layer opacity to somewhere around 75%.

Step Six—Let There Be Blur

Make sure the shadow layer is selected and go to Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur. You’ll get a warning that “the shape layer must be rasterized before proceeding…” click “OK” to continue. Adjust the blur radius to whatever looks best to you. In this case I’m using 1.7px.

Step Seven—Finishing Touches

Almost done! Here’s where you can make any last adjustments that you see fit to make. Typically, I will reduce the width of the shadow layer a bit to hide the shadow protruding from the photo sides. I’ll also take this opportunity to adjust the shadow opacity.

The Final Product

You should end up with something like this. It’s a great way to break away from everyone-can-do-it dropshadows that currently oversaturate the world of design. For some more fun try using different shaped paths. Awesome results can be had with using a oval instead of a rectangle! Go nuts!