Digitalmash

In the recent article I wrote for Smashing Magazine on light and shadow, a few people complained in the comments that as wonderful as the article was, there were no ‘tricks’ to be found. In my defense, the title was changed (made more sexy) after I sent it through.
So for people wanting to know how I did the shading in the coke can examples, here is the first of two posts I’m going to make showing simple shadow tricks you can use in Photoshop.

Step 1.

Make a drop shadow

Create a drop shadow using layer styles. Keep the distance at zero and don’t make the size too big — I’m using 7px here (later on, making a shadow softer/blurrier is easier than making it sharper).

Put the opacity up to full (this simply gives us more darkness to play with should we need it).

TIP: Make sure your object is properly cut out (eg: no white edges) or this effect is going to fail.

Step 2.

Create layer

Right-click on the shadow and choose ‘Create Layer’. This will put the drop shadow on it’s own layer and let us play around with it.

Step 3.

Transform

Use Ctrl-T / ⌘-T to bring up the transform bounding box.

Now Ctrl-click / ⌘-click one of the transform points (I’m using the top middle point) on the box and start to skew your shadow whilst still holding down Ctrl / ⌘. Where you angle it is up to you and depends on the direction you want the light to appear to be coming from (in my example it’s coming from the front left.

Once you’re done you may need to nudge the shadow a little so that its end meets up with you object’s end (in my example that would be the wedgehead’s feet).

Step 4.

Groom

Using the blur tool, gently smooth out the end of the shadow furthest from the object to give it some dispersion. You can also use a semi-soft eraser, to gently groom the shadow until it looks right.

At this stage you can also drop down the opacity of the shadow layer just a tad if you want (I did).

Step 5.

A touch of shading

Lastly, in the layers panel Ctrl-click / ⌘-click the layer thumbnail with your object (to select it). Now create a new layer and with a softish round black brush on 30-50% opacity add a little shading to the side of the object where the shadow falls.

I’ve hidden the object layer to better show the shading.

Finito

All done

Hopefully you can reproduce this effect without too much trouble. Just remember it’s all about making gentle changes. Good luck with it.

—Published 29 April, 2009 ← Journal Home