Any time or place
Train photo by: ps_by_ex
member, "An"
Used with permission.
member, "An"
Used with permission.
Mark Lawrence
| Adding a shadow to an image can be an effective tool in giving your photo a more dimensional look to it. But suppose, as in this case the layers have already been flatten. Photoshop will not allow you to add a drop shadow to your locked / background image. Here's a work around....... |
| We are going to select the front part of this train for our shadow. I'm going to use the magnetic lasso tool as it's faster for this kind of selection. |
| Tip: The magnetic lasso tool looks for contrasting pixels, and puts the line there, along with anchor points for your selection. The train outside the frame can be selected in a matter of seconds this way. If an anchor point sticks where you don't want, just hit the delete key to back up and click in your own anchor points if needed. Once you come full circle your tool will show a tiny circle next to it indicating the next click.... will complete the selection. Notice on this close up of the train that the selection need not be that precise as we are just doing a shadow here. |
Close selection
indicator
indicator
Magnetic lasso tool
| Now that your selection is complete you will see the famous "marching ants" Right click to bring up this dialog box and select Layer via copy |
| Your layers pallet now looks like this |
| Now with your new layer selected ( highlighted in grey here). Click the Layers style button and select Drop Shadow |
| This is the fun and easy part. Just play with the sliders untill you get something you like |
| Important Note: If you already have a shadow in your image. Make sure your new one is going in the same direction. Unless you live on a Planet with two Suns |
| Old shadow direction |
| New shadow direction |
| Use the dodge tool to lighten this area up. |
| I like going around the edges with the blur tool to eliminate that hard "copy and paste" look. |
| Also, you might want to use the clone tool to clean up any edges |
| Before |
Note: The gradient in these photo may look a
little rough due to the jpeg compression of
the downloaded image.
little rough due to the jpeg compression of
the downloaded image.
Thanks An
| After |
| You can also do this technique with just about any photo to give it a little zip. |