Since Illustrator CS2, Adobe introduced live effects which are effects that can be applied to a selection, then tweaked at anytime after. One of the default effects is the popular drop shadow effect which is seen on practically every web page these days.

But the settings for the drop shadow effect are pretty limited and not as easy to use as in Photoshop.

The default settings place a huge shadow under your object and offer no granular way to tweak your shadow except to literally type the decimal values. In this tip I’ll show you alternative way to create even better drop shadows.

One the reasons to use drop shadow is to create a realistic shadow as if light was being cast. This works if you object is perfectly flat. Most things aren’t.

A better option over drop shadow is using Effect->Stylize->Feather. Not on the object itself, but another under the object you want to create a shadow. Lets create a picture frame than bends slightly at the bottom giving the image a better depth than that of the drop shadow. You’ve seen this effect in many places lately like Mint.com as shown here.

Notice the shadow creates a subtle lift just on one side. Lets try it out.

1. Create a square

   

2. Copy, then Edit->Paste in Back (Command+B), remove any stroke applied

3. Fill the object with black

4. Nudge the object left and up a few pixels.

   

5. Apply the Feather Effect, about 10px will do

   You should begin to already see a nice edge on your object. What’s nice about feather is the radius it creates around the corners. You might want to add a fill color to the foreground object if you don’t want this to appear too invisible.
   

6. Resize the height

   Grab a top or bottom handle on your feathered object and Option+Drag inward so both sides just the height is scaled.
   

7. Add a point on the path

   With the Pen Tool (p), click about midway on the object to add a new anchor point. You can do with this the standard Pen Tool or the Add Anchor Point Tool.
   

8. Drag corner point inward

   With the Direct Select Tool, select each corner and drag under your top object. Move them so they are just inline with your top object. You may want to object this a little depending on what you need
   

9. Some Final Tweaks

   You can leave this as is and it works pretty well, but some subtle changes can make this even better. Add a slight gradient to your object to create a light source. Add a slight bend on one of the ends to create a warp. Below is the final piece, in addition to the above, I dragged the lower feathered corner down to add a slight shadow under the warp.
   

So from here you can probably see how much more flexible this approach is than the drop shadow effect. And you still have full control over the effect values since it’s a live effect. Here’s another version I created for an image.

Source: Google LIFE Images

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Basic, Intermediate, Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.