Warped Shadows or Photos in PSE

It's your lucky day here today - freebies and a little tutorial in the same 24 hours! How cool is that! OK, first I just want to put a quick comment here on what I see as the main difference between what I showed yesterday for clean photo mats and using an inside stroke for a photo mat. I do sometimes just use the inside stroke. It yields a result like a photo that is printed with the white edge right on the photo. These used to be readily available. I think all my kiddie pictures from the 60s and mid 70s looked like that, at least what I can remember from the albums my mom has. You can still get your photos printed that way in some photo labs, if you ask for it.

What I showed yesterday is like a photo and a separate paper mat - that means you can use patterned paper for the mat and have a shadow on the photo to show that it is digital mounted or glued to the paper mat behind it. So the inside stroke that was mentioned in a couple of the comments yesterday is also a neat thing to do - it just yields a different result.

ALSO: updates on yesterday's procedure. Melinda said you do NOT have to hold down the shift key to constrain proportions while resizing in PSE 6. (You do have to in earlier versions). And you can accomplish making the mat in an alternative way by CTRL+clicking on the photo layer and then holding down the CTRL key while click on the new layer icon IN THE LAYERS PALETTE: that combo creates a new layer below the active one instead of above the active one. Then you can fill the selection with ALT+backspace or the paint bucket tool.

SO! On to today's tutorial - the popular warped shadow. This tutorial piggybacks on yesterday because it involves creating a shadow on it's own layer just below the photo or element that you want to shadow. In this case, we are not going to resize it with the transform tool. To get started, use the first few steps from yesterday:

1. CTRL+click on the layer (in the layers palette) for the item you want to shadow
2. CTRL+click on the new layer icon in the layers palette
3. fill the selection on the new layer with black

Now, we are going to add a blur and change the blend mode, opacity of the layer.

1. clear the selection on the new layer - CTRL+D
2. apply a gaussian blur to the layer: filter--> blur--> gaussian blur. You will be able to see what's happening with the layer in your workspace to adjust the pixel radius of the blur. Depending on the size of your item, a radius of 4-15px will be good.
3. Next, you can nudge it depending on where you see your light source coming from on your page. If you use a typical 120 degree setting for your regular drop shadows, nudge it down and to the right a few pixels using your arrow keys. If you visual a different light source, move your shadow accordingly.
4. Now it's time to warp the shadow a bit. This will give the look of the photo not being completely flat onto the page. You should still have the shadow layer selected (not the photo). To warp the shadow, we are going to use the liquify tool. Open it via these menu commands: filter --> distort --> liquify. You will get a screen that shows your blurred shadow layer. On the right side, change the brush size to as big as it goes - 600px. The pressure adjustment is fine at 50.
   
5. Using that large brush, place the circle that indicates its location halfway onto the bottom of the rectangle and push it slowly and gently up. You may need to repeat on a smaller scale toward the edges. This tool takes a little getting used to but don't worry, if you go too crazy, just use the revert button to undo it - if you use cancel it will close the dialog box for the tool. When you are done, your shadow should look something like this and then you can hit OK. Yes, the result is a little subtle so your eyes are not fooling you. Processing the result after hitting OK may be SLOW if you are low on RAM. which yields the following result with the photo showing:
6. Now for a few final adjustments. First, drag down the bottom edge of the warped shadow so it will show just a little bit more. This will only be a SMALL drag down. Then you can change the blend mode of the shadow layer to multiply in your layers palette and reduce the opacity. I like around 66% for more uses - it depends on what you are placing the photo over. The final result is this: and here is an animation of the shadow vs. non-shadowed photo

I hope you found this helpful! Tomorrow, I'll show you a quick finish on these steps if you are shadowing an element with some transparency and how to liquify shadows for things like the ends of ribbons.