Saturday Special…Shadows
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Heidi here with a new Saturday special … shadows. There are so many different directions I could go, but today I am going to show you how to change the color of your shadow. If you have questions about shadows, you can always check here and here for a wealth of information. Before I get started, I wanted to highlight an amazing product in our store … Get Real – Realistic Drop Shadow Styles by Jennifer Barrette. Jennifer had made it simple to apply a shadow to almost any element you can imagine. With my example below, I have used her shadow styles on my layouts. Simple and easy. Jennifer was kind enough to offer a coupon if you would like to purchase her style :
$1 off
code – getreal_1off
expires – March 20th 2010
O.k., onto the lesson. Have you ever had an item that you added a shadow to, but it just doesn’t look right? Sometimes, having a black shadow isn’t natural. Look around you right now. Are the items casting shadows black? Maybe they are a soft shade of gray. Maybe the are reflecting the color of the item as the shadow. Keep this mind as you go to shadow today’s layout.
However you add your shadow, go ahead and add it to your paper/element/etc. Now, I want you to double click on the “fx” on your layer you shadowed.
It should bring up a box that looks like this:
Make sure you that the “drop shadow” box is highlighted in blue like the #2 shows. If that is not highlighted, you will not see the screen above. Next, I want you to click in the black box circled in #3. It should bring up a new box that looks like this:
Notice that your cursor can now choose a new color if you place it over your layout. Next, I want you to click on your paper. You color box will change to the color of the paper and this is o.k. Now you want to start moving down on the color box. I usually go to the gray side of my color. Watch how the shadow color changes on your element. Does it now look a little softer and more natural? Keep playing with it until you get a shadow that looks like it would if it were sitting in front of you right now. Or, if you have Jennifer’s style, you can keep the color where it is and just move the sliders as shown by the #4 until you get a color you are happy with.
For my layout above, I had white paper under my pics/elements. With Jennifer’s shadows, she has a brown color for the shadow which give a nice warm natural shadow. But for this particular layout, I wanted my shadow a little more on the “cool” side, so I changed the shadow color. I did not, however, change the shadow color of the white paper resting on the bottom brown paper. It was the perfect color for that paper.
Here is my layout:
Please note that this was using CS4. I am not familiar with Elements, but I was told by Denise, who is the queen said that the dialog boxes look different, but the concept still works. 
This also works in Paint Shop Pro.
