Project #30 - Creating Realistic Shadows

1. Open the image you downloaded into Photoshop.

2. Ok, the first thing we need to do is duplicate the layer with the man on it. Drag the layer down to the Create New Layer icon to do this. Rename the layer Shadow and drag it so it sits under the original layer.

3. Hold down the CTRL key and click on the thumbnail of the Shadow layer - this will make a selection (marching ants).

   Press the 'D' key to reset the color palette back to black and white. While holding down the ALT key, press Backspace. The selection you made will now be filled with black.

4. Before we go any further, we need to look at the light source that's hitting the man. You will notice that his left hand side is lighter - causing him to have shadows on his right. From this we now know that the shadow we are creating wants to be on the right.

   From the Edit menu, choose Transform and then Distort.

   You should notice eight handles/nodes appear.

5. Move the top right and bottom right nodes down to the right - automatically you will see the image being distorted. Stop when you achieve something like the example.

6. Now that we have the position of our shadow, we need to remove the harshness of it. From the Filter menu select Blur... Gaussian Blur. Use your own preferences for the value entered. In our example we used a value of 9.7.

7. Finally, soften the shadow further by adjusting the Opacity of the Shadow layer. Again use your own preferences with this.

Play around with other shadows on objects. Use the white background until you get familiar with the technique, and then start applying it to your projects.