Paint Shop Pro Tutorial – Shadows

Hello scrappers!  Brandy here to bring you your Tuesday Tip.  I have had many requests to type up a shadow tutorial.  I haven’t done so until now because it varies depending on the element, paper, etc.  But, I decided to give it a whirl.  I find that shadows make the layout.  I am not an expert on shadows, but love playing with them.  They are actually my favorite part of creating a page.  I had this long tutorial with pictures typed up and it got so long that I decided to delete it and just list a few tips. If you would like a specific tutorial, just leave a comment and I will work one up for you for a future Tip Tuesday. Just so you know, I use PSP, so some steps may be a little different.  But, I think all programs have the same concept.

The setting I use most of the time for shadows are:
Vertical 10
Horiztonal -9
Opacity 50
Blur 25 or 50 depending on the depth
Color R, G and B are set to 32

I always put the shadow as a seperate layer:

Sometimes these settings do not look right. For example, here I have a purple background and a white background to show you the difference.

I would change the opacity on the darker paper to 75 and a larger blur, probably 50.

Have you ever used the Gaussian blur on your shadows? This makes a realistic effect on some elements that have a thicker depth. See below image. It just depends on what you are shadowing if that will work or not.

Another cool tip, that I use all the time is adding a shadow to a shadow. For example, since my shadow is set on a separate layer, I can add another shadow to that one using opacity as 25 and a larger blur. Then I move the shadow over to the side. This gives an effect of a deeper shadow. See images below.

You have your original shadow, then you add a separate shadow to the current shadow with the settings set as:

Vertical 10
Horiztonal -9
Opacity 25
Blur 40
Color R, G & B are set to 32

Then I had to drag the 2nd shadow over to the left a bit to make it look more realistic. By adding a shadow to the shadow, this gives it more depth, kind of like a fading shadow. This is how it turned out.

You can use the above directions on anything thick, like a button, thick beads, sticks, a thick alpha, etc or possibly a piece of ric rac, depending on how thick it is.

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If you are doing a shadow on a sticker or thin paper and want it to be a close shadow, I use this setting.

Vertical 5
Horiztonal -4
Opacity 50
Blur 15
Color R, G & B are set to 32

Now for staples… I used a darker opacity because it is very close to the paper and you can see it a bit better. I also used a smaller blur and lowered the vertical and horizontal numbers (like I did with the ghost) because it is closer to the paper.

Vertical 4
Horiztonal -3
Opacity 75
Blur 15
Color R, G & B are set to 32

Now, let’s shadow a string. This is what I think is the most fun shadowing. You can do all kinds of things with string. I will use my beginning setting mentioned in the beginning of this post and then go from there. Now, I will use my warp function. This will put a grid on the layout.

Now, you can start moving your shadows around by clicking and dragging the squares to move the shadow where you want it. Remember not to move the shadow where the staple is because if it is stapled, then it wouldn’t have a big shadow there. You want to make it replicate real life as much as possible. In the image below, I have a red arrow beside the squares that I moved to drag the shadows a little.

Here is how it turned out, I don’t really like it that dark, so I’m going to double click on the shadow and change the opacity to 50. This will change the original 50 opacity by 50%. If this would have had a dark background, I would have kept the shadow dark.

Here is a purple and white comparison after changing the blend mode on the string shadow for the white background.

One thing I do want to mention is that if you have a black background, keep the same settings as above except after the shadow is created, then change the blend mode to burn.

Now that is all for now. If you want tips on shadowing a specific item, just let me know and I will write up a tutorial for you. I hope you can understand my directions. The biggest part of getting the best shadows is playing around. Once you play around, you will automatically know what shadows to use for which papers and which elements. The funniest part of doing a layout is the shadows. LOL I love getting creative with them.