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Casting Shadows

Start by creating an object to cast the shadow. I've chosen to crete a text object of the word "shadow", but you should be able to do better than this. Copy the object, and mirror (flip) it vertically. Make sure the edges of the two objects line up.

Next, use the skew and/or perspective tools to distort the shadow similar to the picture on the left. Try and keep in mind where you want the supposed light source to come from. Make sure you preserve the size of the edge of the shadow that meets the object casting the shadow - otherwise it will look extremely odd!

Switch to the alpha channel and draw a mask fading from black to white across the height of the shadow. In this image, I've used the ruby overlay in Picture Publisher as a guide - no-mask is indicated by red in the screen shot, full mask is indicated by normal colours. Switch back to the picture, and combine this mask with your shadow object (use the Merge Mask tool in PP).

You should end up with an effect similar to this. All that remains is to add some sort of background.

I chose to add a white-to-black gradient fill as the "ground" in my picture. I made the sky black, and then made a copy of the original text object, filling it white and arranging it behind the black text object. I then enlarged the white text object sideways slightly, creating the slight white edge to the text where it reflects the light. I also filled the sky with a purple-black gradient - realistically speaking, this probably should have had the lighter colour (purple) on the left near the light source I guess, but I prefered it this way round, even if it is a bit odd.

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This page was created by James Corrin. All pictures and text belongs to him or the appropriate author. Permission to use any pictures or text from these pages must be sought from the work's author. This page was last updated Saturday 22 January 2000. Email: webmaster@imageeffects.8m.com

	Start by creating an object to cast the shadow. I've chosen to crete a text object of the word "shadow", but you should be able to do better than this. Copy the object, and mirror (flip) it vertically. Make sure the edges of the two objects line up.
	Next, use the skew and/or perspective tools to distort the shadow similar to the picture on the left. Try and keep in mind where you want the supposed light source to come from. Make sure you preserve the size of the edge of the shadow that meets the object casting the shadow - otherwise it will look extremely odd!
	Switch to the alpha channel and draw a mask fading from black to white across the height of the shadow. In this image, I've used the ruby overlay in Picture Publisher as a guide - no-mask is indicated by red in the screen shot, full mask is indicated by normal colours. Switch back to the picture, and combine this mask with your shadow object (use the Merge Mask tool in PP).
	You should end up with an effect similar to this. All that remains is to add some sort of background.
	I chose to add a white-to-black gradient fill as the "ground" in my picture. I made the sky black, and then made a copy of the original text object, filling it white and arranging it behind the black text object. I then enlarged the white text object sideways slightly, creating the slight white edge to the text where it reflects the light. I also filled the sky with a purple-black gradient - realistically speaking, this probably should have had the lighter colour (purple) on the left near the light source I guess, but I prefered it this way round, even if it is a bit odd.