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Adding Dropshadows with Photoshop

Dropshadows are super cool, and can be added to images, shapes, and text. The trick is to learn moderation, because too much dropshadow can make your graphic look dated, or your text difficult to read.

The Basics

For this example, I'm going to add a drop shadow to some text. So what I did was went to File-->New, and created a new image at 500 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall. Then I typed in my text.

The next step is to go to your Layers window, make sure that your text layer is the one selected, and click on the FX icon (this looks different in different versions of Photoshop), and the first one on the list is Drop Shadow, so click that.

A popup window will appear and the default drop shadow settings will be displayed on your image. If you can't see a drop shadow, make sure that the Preview box has a checkmark in it. Now, the default settings are a little too bold for my taste, but it's a personal preference.

Change just a few settings and you've got a much more professional look. What I did was set the opacity to 50%, and the distance to 2px.

Much better, don't you think? Play around with it, and try adding dropshadows to any text that you add over photos, as it will make it stand out more.