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Recoloring Shadows in Adobe® Photoshop®

Lesson 8 from: Shadowing in Adobe Photoshop for Digital Scrapbookers

Traci Reed

Recoloring Shadows in Adobe® Photoshop®

Lesson 8 from: Shadowing in Adobe Photoshop for Digital Scrapbookers

Traci Reed

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Lesson Info

8. Recoloring Shadows in Adobe® Photoshop®

Lesson Info

Recoloring Shadows in Adobe® Photoshop®

Let's talk about re coloring shadows and when you would use a different color shadow it's not always necessary you can see on this play out I didn't recover any of the shadows I just played it the opacity and it looks fine there's there's not really a huge need for recovering shadows but it is fun sometimes and it can be effective so let's, talk about the snapshots flag over here remember when I said that it was kind of dark and muddied up the edges and it didn't work very well for me? Well, then let's play with the color and see if that helps. So if we open up the drop shadow and click on the color, we can use the color picker to sample the brown from the kraft paper underneath it. But if we just sample the brown from the craft favor underneath it, the shadow disappears because now it's the same color, so we want to take it down into a saturated version of that color. You go super darken, go a little bit lighter it's, you're gonna have to adjust it, play with it in a trust it, but now...

, because I made that shadow so much smaller, you can't see it anymore, so let's zoom in a little bit more so we can see and now we can put our normal paper shadow on it and you can see that it's more realistic now this this is way too dark of a color I want to go a little bit lighter a little less saturated but you can see the difference between a colored shadow and a black shadow hit the lack shadow kind of monies at the edges but the colored shadow gives it a little bit more definition so like I said it's not always necessary especially when you get to things like when you're shadowing over multiple objects that's going to be a pain in the butt too change the color over every object so it's not something that you really need to stress about too much but sometimes when you have those problem areas that just don't make sense you and then changing up the color can really be effective um for that so let's talk about this ink over here not something that we're going to shadow but we did talk about sometimes it's effective so let's see what happens if we had a little tiny shadow to it and see if it looks okay sometimes it's gonna look find sometimes it's not um trump shadow way have floating paint we don't want that but we can take it down to one and one and kind of shadow just suddenly it's not as effective on this layout but let's say that you were using black paint and you had it on the black lay out are the black paper under here if you don't have a shadow on it they can kind of disappear so you can add just a subtle tiny shadow and it just gives a little definition around the edges but it's totally personal choice not most people are going to shadow doodles and ink but sometimes if you're having problems making something show up it's commie really effective we turn now later back on all right so we are done channeling this layout with our standard shadows we have everything shadowed everything suddenly look realistic and pretty they're subtle but they are enough the shadows are enough to see you can see them um and their varied which is important not everything has the same shadow not everything looks exactly the same we accounted for the things that go over and under we added shadows on opposite sides when we needed tio however in our last segment today we're going to come back to this layout and we're going to work things and we're going to take him to the next level so things that can be changed are the ribbon can be can be worked tio go to and from the page away and just like it would in real life well in real life because you know it happens so often you will want to work the shadow on the yellow flower so that it goes to and from the paper as well and um I'm going to show you how to curl up this bottom everyday moment every moment counts card so that it looks like it's floating away from the paper a little bit. So how's a chat room doing? We're doing great in question, coming from susie in a couple of people who voted in this are saying now when you're working, tracy, do you shadow last or do you build up after you've built up your letters? Or do you actually just shadow as you're going along in the design process? What's your preference? Um, I prefer to shadow is I'm going along with the basic shadows and then once I'm done is when I'll start working things because if you start working shadows and you start messing with them more technically than that, and then you change something down the line or you move it, it can mess up and not look is good, so once I know that I have the shadow where I wanted to be, then I will orbit, but I definitely shadow as I go along because I like to see the definition, but I don't, um like I don't add officer dead shadows until the end, I don't work until he and that kind of stuff. What do you recommend for somebody's perhaps not so advanced you think it is better to shadow as you go or perhaps to build your whole design and then go in and put in the shattering in the embellishment? I don't think it's a matter of being advanced or not it's totally a personal preference some people don't shadow until the end but I find that if I don't shadows shadows of it and I'll miss things and I'll be looking at the page three years later going I don't have a shadow on this and now it's gonna bug me for the rest of my life so I think that if you're using layer styles then it doesn't really make a difference because if you're done and you want to shadow when you're done, you can just click on every single paper and have the same shadow sells everything and then go in and adjust but because I like to adjust as I'm going along I shadow as I go along what about your experiences with traveling by shadow as I go along? If I'm looking at a completely flat page it I don't know I just don't see what I need to do I have to see the definition you know when I do the title I do all that fight the same time so like control shift and do the alpha at the same time I do have a question about a title, though, like you're saying and shadowing that, do you do each letter, or do you merge those? I do. It's letter, ok, it's. Gonna if you have letters that are overlapping, you're going to have to, if you merged them all together, and then you wouldn't have the shadow over the letter, so I emerged. All right, I do them all individually, and then sometimes you might need tio. But you know how we're talking about the opposite and shadow, just to have definition you might need to have, like, an opposite ed shadow, and then another shadow for the whole title altogether, and in which case, I would merge it all together and then shadow again. Yeah.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Shadow Actions
Shadow Styles
Shadow Types and Palette
Shadows Layout 1
Shadows Layout 2

Ratings and Reviews

Diane
 

I bought all three of Traci's classes and am very impressed. Even though I consider myself a professional Photoshop user, I learned some great new tips and tricks. Not only that, I found the classes inspiring and it kicked my digital scrapbooking creativity up a few levels. More than worth the money. Easy to watch, inspiring and a great teacher.

L. Phillips
 

This class was fascinating and moved at a good pace. Scrapbookers these days use so many varied Photoshop skills and are some of the most creative thinkers around. I learned so many practical - use it right now! - tricks for shadowing any kind of object and make styles out of them for one-click usability. There's a bit much of the biography section at the front of the class but I felt the usable information was enough to warrant the purchase so I can skip the personal section. Traci is a friendly and clear speaker, and a wealth of knowledge. She should definitely be featured in more advanced scrapbooking classes AND even for creating vector embellishments!

a Creativelive Student
 

Awesome class! WOW, I had no idea about the world of shadowing. I just started digital scrapbooking and knew my layouts were lacking something and now I know what...depth! I definitely feel more confident now in adding shadows to my pages and I have also graduated from Elements to the full version of PS thanks to Traci's suggestion. I am headed now to search for more classes by Traci. Thanks for a great class!

Student Work

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