hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today we're looking at how to add a
shadow to an image using photoshop
this image is from my photoshop layers book and i frequently get questions
about how i created it if i turn off the layers you can see
that the man in his shadow are separate images on their own layers
i shot the scene in whitby on the pier around 12 years ago
it's really a composite from two different images shot at different times
although at the same location to create the composite image i cut the
manner to this image and added him to the background as a new
layer because there wasn't any direct sun in the original image the man
doesn't have a shadow there if i turn his shadow off in the new
image you can see that it looks very odd our brains can't make sense of the scene
because we expect to see a shadow this is even more obvious because we can
see shadows from the railings along the pier
what i need to do is add a realistic shadow of the man
the best way to create a shadow is to use the object that you want to cast the
shadow from which in this case is the man
if i turn off the background layer you can see that the man is on a transparent
layer this is important because you can then
isolate the object to duplicate it with the copy then becoming the shadow
to create the shadow of the man i first need to copy him
now there's a couple of ways i could do this i could use the rectangular marquee
tool to draw a selection around the man
after that i can choose to create a new layer via copy from the photoshop menu
this copies the rectangular selection to a new layer
the alternative is to duplicate the layer with the man in it
now that's fine because in this example the man is the only object on that layer
before continuing i'll rename the new layer to be shadow
when i click on the move tool in the photoshop tools palette
a box appears around the man to isolate those pixels
this happens because the rest of the image layer is transparent
the way that i'm going to convert the man shape to a shadow
is using the transform tool in the photoshop edit menu
there are several transform options in the menu but i want to use
distort this gives enough control to distort the shadow without causing any
warping to the area i can now grab the handles at the top of
the box and pull them down to move the shadow
because i can see the shadows from the railings i can use them as a guide to
help inform the direction of the new shadow
when i have the copy image looking the correct shape and direction
to make it appear as a shadow i can then apply the transform
at this point the man appears to be jumping in the air because his right
foot doesn't meet the shadow to fix this i'll zoom into the area so i
can see it more clearly
then i'll use the arrow keys on my keyboard so that i can
nudge the shadow up to meet his right
foot
now we need to fix the shadow so that it's black
to do this i'll add a new levels adjustment
and then right click on that layer to create a clipping mask
this clips the levels adjustment to the layer below it in the levels window
which in this example is the shadows layer when you clip an
adjustment layer to another layer it only affects that
layer when you make an adjustment i can then drag the black level on the
left over to the right to turn the shadow completely black
this is now beginning to look more like a shadow but there's still a few more
tweaks we need to make the first is to reduce the opacity of
the layer now at this point i'm going to do that to around
40 and then i'll change the blending mode to multiply
this helps to create the shadow effect by making the shape
transparent and blending it with the background
then i'm going to apply a blur to the shadow because the edge of the shape is
too hard if you look at some of the other shadows
you can see that they soften slightly as they get nearer to the camera
this is the effect that i want to reproduce using the blur filter
to do this i'm going to switch to the quick mask mode
and then draw a gradient over the shadow using the gradient tool
i can click at the start of the shadow and drag the gradient out to the other
end
when i click the quick mask mode again i switch back to the regular mode and the
gradients converted to a selection now i can apply the blur to the shadow
notice how the blur increases as the shadow gets nearer to the camera giving
the illusion of depth next i'm going to reuse the selection by
converting it to a layer mask which i want to add to the shadow layer
you should notice that the other shadows are less intense as they get nearer to
the camera and i want the man's shadow to do the
same when i add the mask it's the opposite of this effect so i
need to invert it using the button in the mask properties window
after that i can adjust the density of the mask to create a more realistic
fading
now it's just a matter of adjusting the opacity of the shadow to match the other
shadows
if the shadow isn't long enough i can still use the move tool to resize and
even reshape it
it's even possible to reposition both the man and the shadow on the image
i hope you found today's tutorial helpful if you have please take a moment
to share it with others i'm robin whalley you've been watching
lenscraft i'll see you soon for another video