I need some help

[nittans]

I need to come up with a way of doing directional drop shadows. The normal drop shadow stuff in the layers is fine as far as it goes but what I am looking for is a way of making a drop shadow appear as if the light is coming from a particular angle and and is ONLY giving one shadow rather than a wider two or three sided shadow.

Any suggestions as to where I can find a nice and easy free tutorial?

Thank you in advance

[SharLamb]

I think there are ways to accomplish this easily in PSE or PS. What are you using? Which version?

[nittans]

I am using CS5 extended

[SharLamb]

I should have known that because of your City Scapes tut.

Maybe this is what you want:

1. Select the layer with the object you want to have a shadow.

2. Click the fx button at the bottom of the Layers Panel.

3. Select Drop Shadow, which will bring up a dialog box.

4. adjust the opacity, distance, spread, size to what you think you'd like (they can all be adjusted further, later on).

5. With the dialog box still open, go over to your canvas, and use your move tool to drag the shadow from behind the object, placing it anywhere you want. When you close the dialog box it will stay where you put it, but if you change your mind, you can open the dialog box again (fx>Drop Shadow), and it will magically be movable again.

I hope this is what you mean, and this helps.

[nittans]

By the time I came back to look I had figured out some of the above and now I have got it to the point where I have tinted it as well - still working on it but I think I now know what I am doing.

How do you smooth the erasing so that it does not look blotchy?

[SharLamb]

I'm not sure what you mean about erasing since I didn't include that in my explanation. But I will try to give you hints about erasing smoothly.

1. Use a hard-edge brush, not a soft-edge brush.

2. If you are working on a square or rectangle, it is helpful to use a hard-edged SQUARE brush.

3. To erase in a straight line, click once at the beginning of the line you want to erase, then SHIFT click at the end of the line. Everything in between will erase cleanly.

Hope this helps.

[nittans]

this is for making the shadow lighter further away from the origin point. I will post something I did tomorrow when I can add some more photos.

[SparkysGirl]

Since you have CS5 ... you can put the shadow on it's own layer in the layers palette and manipulate it even more. Once you get the basic shadow you want on your object, try the following:
(1) Select the layer in the layers palette
(2) Click the down arrow next to "fx" on the layer
(3) From the drop down menu, select "create layer"

... PS will place the "shadow" on the layer below the object layer ...

Now, you can go down to the shadow itself and manipulate it ... and/or ...

You can nudge the object layer up and slightly right or left to make the object appear further from the page.

Hope this is helpful ...

[nittans]

Yes I have got that far and now am playing around with the color of the shadow. Right now the color looks blotchy but with a bit more playing it may smooth out. I will post the finished result later on today after work.

Thank you for all your help.