Proper use of shadows and lightings
Author: Maricon Williams
Light creates shadow and shadow in return, enhances the
appearance of the subject. The interaction of the two is
fascinating. Light can make the subject feisty or dull while
shadows can make it mysterious or terrifying.
Shadows add facet and meaning to an image. Without shadows the
object may appear plain and boring. Lights and shadows establish
the correlation of one object to another and their place in the
full scene. The position and strength of the lights and shadows
also set the general mood of the subject.
It is engrossing to play with lights because you can do amazing
things to your subject just by manipulating it. The sun is
inviting and the objects are responding. The latter casts bright
and translucent blaze that overly saturates the colors of the
scene making sharp shadows. Artificial light also exudes
brightness that illuminates a scene from different perspectives.
It allows innumerable shadows that collide and contends for
prominence. Artificial light comes in a wide array of colors.
Colored shadows are then created by colored light sources.
With the help of Photoshop, the object is vested an illusion
that it has a third dimension. Photoshop's files are
configurations of pixels that are put across the width and down
the height of an image. Third dimension's illusion is created
through the use of accurate shading and perspective.
The sun's shadow identifies the time of the day. It can tell
whether it is morning, noon or afternoon just by its shadow.
Shadows are also essential in some types of arts like painting,
photography and stage play. With Photoshop you can lower your
subject's opacity and blur the layer with the Gaussian Blur
filter. Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. By this you can
manipulate and play the time of your masterpieces.
Shadows are created in various shapes and sizes. You can play
with it to create an amusing blend of objects forming a
remarkable artwork! There are instances when the object casting
the shadow is hidden. There are also times when you have to make
them visible to the scene.
Drop shadow, a distinct type of shadow, has the identical shape
of the object casting it. The distance of the object and the
path of light source resolve the position of the shadow. Layer
Styles allows you to add a drop shadow to layers. It can be
controlled in many ways.
To position the shadow, adjust the Angle field's value in the
Structure of the dialog box. The distance verifies how far the
shadow will fall. The Spread field works like the Hardness
feature of the Brushes - intensify the percentage to yield a
harder edge. To set the size of the shadow, click on the Size
field. To set its shape, choose the Contour field. You can also
click on the Contour icon to bring up the Contour Editor - with
it you can set your own parameters.
To set a noise level for your shadow, click on the Noise field.
When you click on Add Noise filter, it applies the noise to the
layer. In the Layer Style dialog box, you can find Blending
Options. In the General Blending section, you can set the
opacity. After that, go to the Advanced Blending section and see
the Fill Opacity setting. This allows you to lower the opacity
without changing the style effects.
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