Happy Saturday everyone - Tiki here.  Have you ever wanted to try a fantasy layout?  We have so many gorgeous kits with which to do so here at After Five Designs.  If you are interested in this type of layout, good shadows are essential to achieve the 3D look.  I’m going to share a simple and versatile method of casting a shadow in Adobe Photoshop.  The screen shots are from Photoschop CS4.

Step 1:  Separate the Object you would like to shadow from its original background.  My favorite method of extraction is the Quick Selection Tool followed by the eraser tool to clean up any messy edges.  Here is my youngest son after I extracted him from the original picture.

Step 2:  Create a Shadow Version

Ctrl+click your new layer icon to add a new layer below your extraction layer.  Ctrl+click the layer with your extraction to add marching ants around your subject.  With your new blank layer selected, select the Paint Bucket Tool, set the foreground color to Black and fill in the selection.  At this point you should have a black silhouette of your extraction.  You can go ahead and deselect your selection now.

Step 3:  Manipulating the Shadow

First we’ll distort the shadow to cast it across the ground.  The final angle and length of distortion is up to you.

Edit>Transform>Distort

Click and drag the handles to distort the shadow shape.  I usually start with the top middle handle.

I dragged it down and to the left.  Drag individual corners to make any additional adjustments to the shape.

Step 4:  Blur the Shadow

A realistic shadow is blurred at the edges so lets blur our shadow now.

Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur

Now we need to reduce the shadow layer’s opacity to approximately 50% to reduce its definition and allow any texture beneath to show through.

It looks better but the shadow is still too defined for my liking.

Step 5:  Fade the Shadow

With the shadow layer selected, click the “Add a Layer Mask” button on the bottom of the Layers panel.

Now make sure your Foreground is set to white and your background to black by pressing “D”.  Now select the Gradient Tool and set its properties to the following:

It’s hard to see, but my settings are Linear Gradient, Mode: Normal, Opacity 100%, I also have Dither and Transparency checked.

Click on the layer mask in your shadow layer and then click and drag from the object across the shadow and release somewhere outside of it.  The gradient fills white to black allowing 100% of the shadow layer to show through at point 1 and then fades to 0% of the shadow layer at point 2.

I am no shadow expert but I hope this at least gives you some idea of how to get started.  Shadows take a lot of fiddling to get them exactly right and I think some people are just naturally better at seeing the right angles.