“Drop That Shadow!”: Creating Cast shadows in Perspective

Photoshops Drop Shadow Layer Style is a great tool to add a quick and easy cast-shadow on something. However the tool assumes that you are adding the drop shadow to a flat surface, which is not always the case.

Sometimes you will need to add a different Perspective to the drop shadow layer.

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a realistic drop shadow that can be applied to any layer.

Step 1. Create the document and place the object you want to add the Cast Shadow to on its own layer.

Step 2. Apply the Drop Shadow to the layer by going to Layer/Layer Style and then select Drop Shadow. Just create a general shadow and be sure that the Distance is greater than a 1.

Step 3. Separate the Drop Shadow from the Layer. Go to the Layer Palette and right click on the Layer Effects icon, fancy lowercase ‘f’ in a circle to the far right, and select Create Layer. This will put the Drop Shadow on its own layer just below the original layer.

Step 4. Transform the Drop Shadow layer to the new perspective that you would like it to be in. Go to Edit/Free Transform, you may also want to use Skew and Perspective also found in the same place. By moving the box around the selected layer you can transform the shadow to the appropriate angle and perspective.

Step 5. Finishing touches on the shadow may involve a bit of Blurring. Go to Filters/Blur/Gaussian Blur and apply a slight blur to the layer. You may want to play with the layers opacity.