Drop shadow Photoshop is a popular service in photo editing sector. I will be providing you with a step-by-step beginner guide on how to create a photoshop shadow effect. You can create illustrator drop shadow or INDESIGN drop shadow by using Adobe Illustrator and other software. But I am going to show you how to add Photoshop Drop shadow .
Hello everyone! Welcome again to a very new Photoshop tutorial on shadow creation in Photoshop for beginners. Why is shadow important for images? Well, great photos became a masterpiece only because of balanced light and shadows.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a beginner as a photographer or a post-processing expert. Every one of you must have in common if you want to create masterpiece images is proper knowledge of shadow and photography lighting.
Shadow provides the depth of field that brings out a realistic feel to the image. But knowing the correct balance is what everyone should master.
What Is A drop shadow Photoshop?
Table of Contents
Drop shadow Photoshop is a Photoshop image editing effect that helps images look realistic by providing depth of field. In the image editing for catalog photographs, advertising images, and Web pages, drop shadow is one of the significant parts. Because drop shadow keeps the images grounded and provides a realistic look to them while editing product images. Photoshop experts must remove background from the photos. This eliminates the surface from under the product and makes it look like floating in the air.
Floating your product in the air creates doubt in your customer’s minds that can reduce your sales. When you remove the white background, create a drop shadow underneath the product to make it look trustworthy.
Different Types Of Photoshop shadow
If you are willing to add shadow in Photoshop to your product photography image, you must know the shadows. Knowing this will help you understand what type of shadow your image needs and the actual rate for it.
Based on adding shadows in Photoshop and difficulties, the rates differ from one to another. Your image might require one or multiple types of shadow creation service. Before we go for the real action, I want you guys to create shadows in Photoshop.
The different types of shadows we will talk about today are drop shadow, natural shadow, mirror effect shadow, cast shadow, floating shadow, and reflection shadow. You can apply this shadow to any type of backgrounds like a white background and transparent background.
So without further delay, let’s get started…
Photoshop Drop Shadow
Photoshop shadow effect service is an ideal image-editing solution when it comes to digital photos. When retailers upload their product photos in any online store. The images must check some key points to impress the consumer, and providing product photos with realistic looks is one of them.
Making online product photos trustworthy and providing realistic looks is the primary feature of the drop shadow creation technique. In this technique, experts create shadows underneath the product after they cut off the background from the image.
Photoshop experts create a separate layer to complete the drop shadow photoshop, and the photo above the lower layer is high.
The photo shadow size increases to about 70 or so pixels per inch, thus creating a new image. Photoshop drop shadow is easy for larger objects, but when you have small ones such as hair where you have tiny details to cover, it becomes a tough job to do.
But the experts of Silo Path offer professional drop shadow creation regardless of the size and detail of the subject.
Natural Shadow or real shadow Service
Natural shadow or real shadow service makes your images appear lifelike and appealing to serve the users’ expectations. It creates a great view realistic shadow Photoshop. The photos directly coming out of the camera are usually unable to achieve the intended objectives without proper post-processing.
Hence, the natural shadow service helps images to make them impressive. In reality, a Photoshop Shadow Effect can bring the wanted improvement to the company in which photography is essential for business development.
The purpose of the natural shadow service is to make the image drop or photo drop look realistic. In this technique, experts try to add shadows to the pictures just like they are naturally added. l Photographers often look away or do not give importance to natural shadow while they add shadow to their images.
By doing this, they lose the vibe that can connect the viewers to their images. This also can affect online businesses and reduce sales by a large margin. So if you are a beginner, I would suggest you learn and then start adding drop shadow photoshop to your images. Also, you can learn how to mask in photoshop.
Mirror Effect Service
Mirror effect shadow in drop shadow photoshop background makes your subject of the image reflective as if it is on a mirror-like surface. This shadow effect service is mainly used on jewelry images and cosmetics product images. It enhances the quality of the product and makes it look premium.
Some products don’t look good in drop shadow or natural shadow because of their shiny and reflective nature. To improve the viewing experience of these product images, the reflection shadow service is the perfect one to go.
It gives the image a more attractive appearance and 3D appearance than natural. This service has become an essential part of the market in today’s online companies. Companies choose this option for their online store, from the beauty product to the medical product to other ecommerce products.
The application of a reflection or mirror shadow effect in an image gives it a robustness and contrast look connected with other surfaces. However, the main difficulty is how to produce the reflection to seem as though it was not purposely made.
Photoshop cast shadows or Existing Shadow
Sometimes experts need to combine multiple photos and make one. But because of the different angles and framing, blending all the images becomes the most formidable challenge for experts. Cast shadow or existing shadow provides the perfect balance of natural look to the image. When experts combine multiple photos into one, this shadow effect service can play a significant role.
Using the Photoshop cast shadow effect, you can magnify the realism of your image more than using the shadow drop. From the name, you might get an idea about this shadow effect service.
When light falls into an object from one side, a dark shadow is created on the other side, reflecting its subject. In cast shadow, experts use such technique and create shadow just like the model or object and then place it right at the opposite side from where the lighting falls.
Floating Shadow Service
We know what drop shadow Photoshop is and where it is best suited, but what if your image floats in mid-air. You can’t use drop shadow because it’s for the products when placed on a surface not floating in the air. In this scenario floating shadow, service brings you the best result you want. Floating shadow service not only increases the depth of field of your image it also shows an overview of the distance of your product from the surface.
Creating this kind of shadow is more challenging than the typical one as you have to place the shadow precisely, which means the scaling must be perfect.
Only qualified, skilled, and experienced professionals like we have can pull off this challenging task with ease, so all you can do is outsource your files to us.
Now that I have covered talking about all the variations of creating shadows in Photoshop, it’s time to complete the task we came here today. In this Photoshop tutorial of adding drop shadow in Photoshop, I will try to make things simpler so that even a beginner can understand and learn from it.
How To Add drop shadow Photoshop
Being a beginner in photo editing, it is normal not to know how to create a drop shadow in Photoshop, but sometimes it becomes a nightmare for some of you. Your nightmares will end today because you will become an expert and start adding Photoshop drop shadow like a pro after this tutorial. Let’s get started…
Steps 1: Open Your Product Image In Adobe Photoshop
First thing first… select the product image you want to use to add drop shadow Photoshop and then insert it in the art board of adobe Photoshop cc.
To insert the image, you can drag and drop the image directly, or you can use the menu bar on the top. Click on the File→ Open,→ select the image and click OK.
Step 2: Create a new layer with white background
This step will remove the image background and create a new layer with a white background. To erase the background, you can use any selection method you want, but I will go with the professional one in this tutorial.
I am using the clipping path technique to select the background and then erase the background. If you face difficulties while removing your image background, you can check our in-depth how to remove background in photoshop. In that article, I showed almost every simple and easy step that you can go through to remove your image background.
Let say you have removed the background now, create a new layer from the layers panel and fill it with solid white color.
Step 3: Create Duplicate Layer to add drop shadow photoshop
Now create a duplicate of the product images layer so that when you work on your image, it doesn’t get ruined by any accident. To create a duplicate layer of your original image, press Ctrl+J.
Step 4: Change the color of the foreground
Drop shadow is created from the subject itself, so we have to fill the foreground color into black. To change the foreground color, click on the foreground and press Ctrl+X. The foreground color will change and turn into black, but you should do it manually if it doesn’t happen.
Please do it manually. Click on set the foreground color and select the black paint from the control panel…
Step 5: Change The Color Of The Duplicate Layer
After making the foreground color black now, we will change the color of the duplicate layer. Select the duplicate layer and then press Shift+Alt+Delete. This will change the color into the black of the image.
Step 6: Create The Shadow
If you have followed my instruction till now, then you will have a black-colored duplicate layer. Now we will create drop shadows out of it. To do that, you will need a free transform technique by pressing Ctrl+t.
This free transform will allow you to move the black portion anywhere you want. As we are going to add drop shadow, we will move the portion underneath the subject.
So to do that, click on the top of the middle square and drag the image down and take it underneath the subject. This will act as a drop shadow.
Step 7: Fix The Position Of The drop shadow photoshop
After dragging the black image down, it will be in front of the original photo, but a drop shadow comes from underneath the subject. So to fix the position of the shadow, we have to bring the shadow underneath the issue. Now bring the duplicate layer under the original layer, and the shadow will be in the proper position.
Step 8: Add Motion Blur
The shadow we have will be harsh, so that we will add some motion blur. To add blur into the shadow, select the shadow layer and then go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. A window will pop up.
Step 9: Smooth The Edges Of The drop shadow photoshop
From the motion, blur window set the angle to 0 and set the distance according to your requirement, and then click OK to smooth the edges of the shadow.
Now we will add some gaussian blur to it. Again go to Filter and from there, select the Gaussian Blur option. From the gaussian blur window, I will set the radius to 3. You can adjust it as per your requirement and click OK.
Step 10: Add Layer Mask
To make the shadow perfect, we need to use a layer mask with it. Select the drop shadow layer, which is the duplicate layer we have created, and add the layer mask from the layer mask button that is in the right at the bottom of the layer panel.
Step 11: Use Brush Tool To Make The Shadow Perfect
Select a brush from the Brush tool, which you will find in the toolbar. Before you use the brush, remember two things first, the brush size, and the second one is the opacity. These two will determine how your shadow will look.
For my image, I am setting the opacity to 53%, using the default brush size that you can change if you need, and change the foreground color to back.
Just swipe over the drop shadow you have created, and your shadow will slowly blend with the image and look perfect. And we are done! See the output, and I am sure you will get a perfect drop shadow for your image.
Where can you use drop shadow Photoshop
Now that we have created the drop shadow, we must also know where we can use this drop shadow technique, right? But before Photoshop adding shadows you need to know what images of shadows you want. The purpose of the drop shadow is to make the image look realistic and trustworthy to the viewers.
So this technique is mostly used for product photos for online stores, making catalogs.
Digital product photos are in demand because of the boost of the eCommerce business in this pandemic situation when people are afraid of coming out of their houses and shopping in the mall. Let’s dig deep into this matter and know more about the uses of the drop shadow we are talking about.
Amazon Product Photography drop shadow photoshop
Amazon is one of the largest online stores globally, which means the competition between the retailers over there is also tough day by day. The competition between the retailers comes to a stage where providing jaw-dropping images and trustworthiness becomes compulsory.
So, product photos that retailers produce for ecommerce product listing must contain make shadow to make the product grounded and realistic. Other than that, retailers also must follow the amazon product imagess requirements, or they won’t be able to submit any images for the listing in the first place.
If you are a photographer, retailer, or product photo editor, you must know how to add drop shadow in the product photo, or the image you will produce will fall short in impressing the audience.
Jewelry Product Photography
Jewelry product photography is another place where drop shadow photoshop plays a vital role. So, the jewelry business owner need jewellery Photoshop. Jewelry products are shiny and reflective, and so to make them look natural, adding the right amount of shadow is essential.
Jewelry product photo mostly require mirror effect shadow or reflection shadow service, but some require drop shadow. Most of the time, jewelry product photos need background removal service because of the unclear surface and props to shoot.
After removing the background and the props from the image and using a white background to the jewelry image, it will look unrealistic unless we use a shadow to increase the depth of field.
Portrait Photography drop shadow photoshop
Portrait photography is another genre where the shadow is critical. A portrait of headshot images is the best way to express the feature of a person or model. Using the proper self portrait photography lighting and shadow photographer brings out the best quality a person can offer.
Other than that, portrait photography also uses photography retouching to fix the minor flaws of the images. The different types of portrait photos like self portrait photography, black and white portrait photography, or even male portrait photography, you can use the drop shadow with all and make them more authentic.
Footwear Photography
The footwear photography industry is the most modern industry considering other products. Photoshop add drop shadow service makes the footwear look more impressive and authentic to the consumers. When you making shadow on shoes white background, they look realistic.
In footwear images, you will see shadows a lot because only shadows can outline the product’s strength.
Why use drop shadow Photoshop for photographers or online shop owners?
Though I have already answered this question in this section, I will address it directly and thoroughly explain it. It doesn’t matter that you are a photographer or an online shop owner; if you are working with digital photos to make them better, you have to consider Photoshop drop shadow object as the ultimate choice.
Drop shadow can improve the image quality and offer a 3D look with the depth of field to the product.
As well, we can control and manipulate the image with the drop shadow. And the major highlight of the drop shadow service is we can improve the image by retaining the beauty of the shot. For example, we can create any kind, for example, large, tiny, or even flat shadow, to increase the usefulness of the frame.
Photographers can also creatively illustrate drop shadows and make unique designs and things.
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The Bottom Line
In this editorial, you will get to know almost every bit about Photoshop shadow services. The tutorial that will teach you how to add drop shadow in Photoshop will work as a cherry on the top.
If you are searching for a shadow-making tutorial, follow this step-by-step beginner guide on creating a drop shadow in Photoshop.
This article aimed to make sure even the beginner can leave by knowing exactly what a pro person would know about adding shadows in Photoshop.
Before leaving, I want to tell you to stay home, stay safe, stay strong in this challenging time, and learn the Photoshop shadow creation technique like a pro.
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