This free action from Digital Photography For Moms creates a drop shadow around your pictures in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I love the effect when posting on Flickr or other online photo sharing sites. It would also be a super spruce-up for a simple scrapbook picture.
If you save your file as a PNG, the background under the drop shadow is transparent, so you can use it on websites (or papers) of any color which is light enough to see the shadow on. Keep in mind that if you flatten your PNG, you lose your transparency. So plan your workflow accordingly.
The Drop Shadow Free Action has been tested in:
- Photoshop Elements 5, 6 and 7 on Vista
- Photoshop Elements 4, 5, 6 and 7 on XP
- Photoshop CS4
Yes, I tested it successfully in PSE 5 on XP. But if that’s what you’re running, I make no promises. You know what I mean!
The Drop Shadow action is optimized for posting images on the web that are 800 pixels wide at 72 pixels per inch. This is generally how I post my pictures to Flickr. You can adjust it depending on your needs (print vs. web, for instance). I’ll show you how below.
Make sure to run the action on a Flattened Image.
I would be proud for you to use this action on personal or commercial images, as long as you don’t sell the action itself. It would be great it you could post some examples of its use in the Digital Photography For Moms Flickr Group with a DP Moms tag. Even if you aren’t a mom!
Download the Digital Photography For Moms Drop Shadow Free Action for Photoshop & Photoshop Elements
Click on the image to download:
After downloading and unzipping, you can use these instructions for installing actions in PSE.
To adjust the drop shadow effect after you run the action:
- Determine the width in pixels of your image by going to the Image Menu/Resize/Image Size.
- Hit Cancel.
- Double click on the fx symbol on this layer in your layers palette to bring up the Style Settings Dialogue Box.
- I generally set my Size and Distance to be 1.5% of the image’s width in pixels. So, for an 800 pixel wide image, I set both Size and Distance to 12 pixels (800 x .015).
- You can also adjust the Lighting Angle and Shadow Opacity in this box, if you’d like.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you again. Can’t wait to try it !!
ninigoesdigi´s last blog ..Letiscrap 1st digital kit
Love this, but do you know if anyone has tried using it on a Mac? I have PSE 6 on a Mac and would love to use this.
Karen, this webpage has a link to installing actions on a Mac.
http://coffeeteaphotography.blogspot.com/2007/09/installing-coffeeshop-actions.html
Has anyone tried this on PSE 8 I have a 64 bit system running Windows7. Would really appreciate any info!
It works fine in PSE 8, but I don’t know about the 64 bit part.