A Tip For You - Drop Shadows!!

Hey there, this is Britt, just dropping by to give ya a tip on how to really make your layouts pop!! It is incredibly simple...drop shadows! My first few layouts I did, I didn't know about drop shadows and I just want to show you the difference. I went back (I still had the .psd file saved) and added drop shadows to one of my layouts so you can see how flat my before layout looks and how much better it looks after!! Now, I can't really take credit for this layout, I think it was my second one ever and I totally found it in a gallery and scraplifted it...I have no idea who from so if this layout look familiar, then thanks cause I obviously liked it!! LOL!! And I mean I REALLY scraplifted it, I used the same kit and everything!! :P

Before

After

See how in the second picture, it actually looks like the papers and pictures are layed on top of each other instead of looking like one flat photo? Awesome huh! If you look close at the staples (well not too close, they are placed horribly, LOL, remember, second layout ever!!) they actually look like they are really going into the paper on the second one!

Wondering how to do this? Well, I use Photoshop CS4, so I will show you how to do it my program and if you can't figure it out on yours, leave a comment on here and I'm SURE we can find someone who knows how to do it!!

I want to add a drop shadow to this frame.

Go to your layers and pick the layer that you want to add the drop shadow to and double click on that layer. You will get a screen that pops up that looks like this (you may need to click on the image to see it better)

Can you see the little drop shadow added to the frame!? All you need to do it is hit ok and your done! I usually set my drop shadows at a distance and size of 5 or 7 but you can play around and make them bigger or smaller depending on what your trying to do! You can also change the opacity to give it a little different look! There are a million possibilities but just adding the standard drop shadow does wonders to a layout!

An extra tip...if you have a bunch of stuff you want to add the same drop shadow to and you have the drop shadow style saved to your work space window (like I do here)

you can select all the layers then just hit that style and the drop shadow is applied to everything, quick and simple! Hope this little tip helped!! :D