Manually Created Layer Shadow

A shadow gives the appearance of depth to your layer. ProShow provides a layer shadow feature. Simple and easy to use. The only difference between the feature provided Producer from that in Gold is the ability to change the shadow’s opacity. The ProShow shadow feature allows a color change. That is all there is to the ProShow shadow feature. To obtain larger or smaller shadows and/or shadows with a more diffuse look to them, you need to create them manually.

• The smaller and/or smaller the shadow is, the closer to the background the layer appears to be. The larger and/or more diffuse the shadow appears to be, the further from the background it appears to be. Creating your own shadow allows you control over the appearance of your shadow as well as controlling the appearance of what direction the light is coming from.
• Add a same sized layer as the layer to which you are giving a shadow (or duplicate the layer and place it below the original). Then, offset the duplicated layer to the left or right and down or up from the original layer. Give the shadow layer a blur (recommended value of between 20 and 40) and change its opacity (recommend value of between 40 to 80). Change the color as desired. Shadows layers are generally set to black but may be any color desired.

There are a variety of approaches to creating your own shadow but this one is probably the quickest and easiest and also retains any keyframe settings of the original mask.

1) Duplicate the mask layer (if no mask is being used, duplicate the image layer),
2) Change the duplicated layer’s color to the desired shadow color
3) This is how you change the selected shadow layer’s color:
a) Enter Slide Options | Layers | Editing (v4) or Slide Options | Adjustments (v5+)
• To Change to a color other than Black or White:
› Change contrast to -100
› Click on Colorize
› Click on Set and select the desired color.
› Click on Set Color
• If only a white or black shadow is desired instead, these work was well:
› For a black shadow, Set the White Point to -100
› For a white shadow, Set the Black Point to +100
b) Next, give the layer a 60% (50% to 70% generally) opacity
c) Add a 30% blur (20% to 40% depending on the type of shadow fade you want to have)
d) Move the shadow layer to a layer below the masked image
e) Offset the position slightly relative to the mask in the direction you want for the shadow.

The PSP shadow is fixed to the lower right of the image and is fairly small. The shadow layer you create yourself can have any position relative to the mask, any blur setting (very sharp to very soft), any opacity desired, and any size you want.

© 110411-0906, Dale Fenimore, All Rights Reserved
140525-0945