Create Highly Realistic Shadows by Detaching Drop Shadow in Photoshop

hi there this is animation today we they'll learn how to create realistic long shadows by detaching the drop shadow in Photoshop now have you used drop shadow before I guess you have now what does the drop shadow do now when you add a drop shadow as you can see in this it makes the object as if it's coming out of the screen what if you want to make the object stand for example I have add a drop shadow here and if you go to the properties of the drop shadow and if you increase the distance this is called the distance if you increase this this increases the distance of the subject from the surface in this case you have added we have added drop shadow in this circle right and as I increase the distance what's actually happening is shadow is moving away and the object is coming towards you what if you want to make the object stand like this then you need to detach the drop shadow the drop shadow is already detached but then you need to take the drop shadow into a separate layer and modify that so I'm pretty excited there ain't nothing to it but to do itself without any further ado let's get started [Music] so here we are first off and by the way all the images shown in the tutorial is available for download check the link in the description below okay so it's gonna be very useful in creating composites these creating shadows right so let's create a simple composite today to show you how it actually works so what are you gonna do we gonna select this ball and we're gonna place it here so this is a round ball so the best way to selected is using the elliptical marquee tool but elliptical marquee tool creates an ellipse right we need to create a circle how to do this okay to create any proportional object one is to one to create any proportional object ratio 1 is to 1 like square circle all you need to do you need to press and hold shift okay so when you drag down press and hold shift C this creates a circle now let's go ahead and zoom in to create a better selection now when you create a circle selection of this where to start a selection the answer is we don't know we don't really know it's not necessary that you start if you start a selection here it's gonna create a perfect selection so what to do here's what you do press and hold shift follow along press and hold shift okay hold down the left mouse button drag and make a circle now the mouse is still held and the shift is also still held now what you do press and hold spacebar shift is still held mouse is to health press and hold spacebar when you press and hold spacebar you can move the selection okay so when you take the selection here okay it's good okay leave the spacebar shift is still held you're gonna make it a little bigger press the spacebar again move it there leave the spacebar and make it a little big and therefore you adjust now this is not a perfect selection but you basically have the idea of how to do it now this does it very quickly depending upon what shape your object is in now I think this is a good selection so I would make it a little smaller there we go that's pretty good right now there's a little bit left but we'll let go of it okay all you have to do control the command C get control a command we now we have this object over here also what you could have done is dragged the whole of this image and you know paste it here then you would have just selected this and just like that and created a mask that's also something you can do but it's good to have a you know object kind of thing we don't want to carry extra baggages to you but here's the thing when you're copying something like face hair important stuff then you might want to copy it along with the mask the mask way because that way if you lose something extra if you erase something by accident you always have the option to get it back by using masks okay but in this case we don't have much so that's it's okay to do that wait okay so let's place the ball somewhere around here okay that's looking pretty good now you know what this stupid vase is kind of distracting so let's get rid of that so select the background layer make a copy of the background layer first whenever you're doing something like healing or changing stuff removing stuff make a copy of the background layer right that way you have the option to go back that way you have the option to see whether it's looking good or not okay it's not good to edit things in the background layer all right so select the lasso tool and roughly select the ways okay roughly select it and let's try to remove it in one go and go to edit fill and then we have select content aware color adaptation is okay 100% opacity normal click OK let's see what magic it does it's filling and I'm hoping it does a good job if it doesn't we can always use them faster okay so let's hope it does a good job as you can see this is done an amazing job just in one go but there's a problem here have a look this line test just doesn't look right right okay so let's how to hide it the best way to hide it is this control come and eat first let's deselect that select the ball layer turn it on and place it here the best way to hide it right okay just hide it now you can use the patch tool but you know that's more realistic that way okay now time to add shadow let's place the ball somewhere around here okay in the middle let's add a shadow a right click on it go to blending options and you know what the shortcut of going to blending options is double click on the right hand side of the layer and if it's not a smart object you can double click here too to open the blending options right you can also convert this into a smart object to be on the safer side because when you have a smart object no matter how big you make it then no matter how small you make it it doesn't lose any pixel details okay now when it's a smart object if you double click on it it will open another image where you can edit the smart object but what all these works is click on the right side of the layer and it opens up the blending options dialog box make sure double click it ok now let's add a drop shadow okay check the drop shadow it adds a drop shadow now select the drop shadow to just manipulate its properties no distance anything doesn't right really matter you can increase the opacity all the way to 100 because anyway we're gonna edit that separately now I'll increase it to hundred then you can a distance doesn't matter size you can decrease it you can make the shadow hard because anyway we're gonna use blur okay so click OK all right now what you got to do it's really simple go to layer kit layer style make sure drop shadow is checked and then create layer some aspects of ethics cannot be reproduced ok doesn't matter now drop shadow is on a separate layer have a look isn't that interesting now all you have to do place the drop shadow just beneath it just on a slide controller come on T let's make it a little flat just like that and the light is coming from the right so where would the shadow be to the left right so just to the left and let's zoom in and let's place it properly something like this now this is looking really cool right now we need to add a little bit of blur to it that will add okay now let's add some advanced blur to it how to add elements plur there's children photoshop called blur gallery which allows you to add all kinds of blur free use blur iris blur is really fantastic let's just show you okay first convert this into a smart object right click on it and convert to smart object or what you can do you can go to filter you can click and work for Smart Filters since they have already done it this is grayed out okay then go to blur gallery at any one okay let's add filled blur this allows you to add all kinds of blur in one panel this brings up a completely new dialog box this is very interesting now what is field blur field blurs like Gaussian blur it adds an overall blur to whatever object you select so if I just go ahead and this is good this is good just twenty eight pixels is good now let's come to iris blur which is the crux of the magic so let's bring this middle point here so we want this photo to blur from this point so in the middle the shadow will be really hard as the shadow goes further it becomes soft right so this is the touching point place the point middle point where the ball is touching okay now let's make this a little bigger and just like that let's make this a little something like this let's drag it to the right just a little bit and let's make it little narrower and these are the points from where the blurring begins okay let's bring this points a little there now if you increase the blur as you can see the farther area get blurred the most and then in my areas get blurred the least okay so let's go ahead and increase the value somewhere around that now that's realistic let's zoom out a little bit okay let's have a look happily now that's looking nice and once you're satisfied you can also try till chef bottler just play with it there's a nothing to it but to do it only if you do it then you will learn how these things work how these things come into play okay so let's click OK once you're satisfied now in valid numeric value something wrong happened somewhere click OK again now this is fine now once the blur is applied here advantage since this is a smart object you can always double click on this blur gallery and that will bring back the dialog box Inc and change the values if you want but I'm not gonna do it because again it will take a lot of time just processing that's ok now you can go ahead and decrease the opacity if you want just like that I would go with somewhere around I like high opacities 92 is fine you can try different blend modes like overlay light overlay doesn't look good and multiply was great let's change back to normal Mama's good now once you add a shadow it is looking nice it is looking realistic but this part also is a little dark so let's add a little bit of darkness to this area how to do that create a new layer simply and take the brush make sure it's black and just start painting with black make sure the flow is somewhere around 5 or something and then just start painting now don't worry about the color spilling out of the ball why because we are adding a clipping mask what is clipping mask now when you darken this it darkens the outside area also but if you press and hold alt or option and click between these two layers this black thing whatever you do will only be applied to this object isn't that interesting now when you do no matter what do you do it just won't go out so let's simply just paint in black to the areas we want just add a little bit of shadow there there we go paint in a little more kit you can also decrease the opacity later if you want to from here there we go but I liked full opacity and that's pretty much it you can try blend if if you want you can right click on it go to blending options and take the slider off the underlying layer from the right to left if you want just add a little bit of realism to it just like that see what nice difference it makes right it makes it more real so that's how you create shadows by detaching the drop shadow I know there are done surveys of creating shadows but this is one of the Nifty is this way to do that so try it now here's a quick recap number one plays the object if you already have the object in your project you don't need to then number to apply drop shadow how to apply drop shadow go to the blending options to go to the blending options right click blending options right click on that layer blending options or double click on the right hand side of the layer once your blending options check the drop shadow manipulate the properties opacity at 100 because it really doesn't matter click OK now once once you apply the drop shadow all you can do you can go to layer layer Styles create layer make sure drop shadows check create layer then convert the drop shadow into smart object to make it non-destructive then go to filter blur gallery and apply any blur iris blur and then when you apply that if you can apply all kinds of blur to that just check and change the values click OK many you're pretty much done opacity blend if and all that sort of stuff is your sidekick stuff to make it look more awesome so I hope you enjoyed it and if you did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe make sure you bring the Bell so that you my friend don't miss anything I'll see you guys my next until then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 419,560

Keywords: add shadow in photoshop, drop shadow photoshop, realistic shadow photoshop, shadow effect, long shadow photoshop, drop shadow layer, cast a shadow in photoshop, shadow in photo manipulation, photo manipulation, compositing, photoshop photo manipulation tutorial, piximperfect

Id: 7V9ilNoPhsc

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2017