Drop shadows are used in digital scrapbooking to create a realistic effect & add dimension to the page. The goal is make drop shadows that are appropriate to what a 3 dimensional object would have.

You can easily add a drop shadow to objects. Remember that text is an object. You can follow the same steps to add a drop shadow to a square and to text.

To add a drop shadow to an object:

1. Click the Selection Tool and click the object to select it.

2. Click Object | Drop Shadow.

3. Click the color picker and select the shadow color. Although black is the default drop shadow color in Photo Editor, many scrappers find that gray is a softer and more realistic color. In some cased a darker shade of the object color results in a very realistic shadow.

4. Drag the Angle slider until the drop shadow is the desired angle. The default angle is 315* This seems to do nicely as it seems that the light is coming from the top left corner of the paper. Moving the dial counter-clockwise shifts the angle to the right & up. And conversely, dialing it clockwise shifts the angle to left & down.

5. Drag the Offset slider to the left to reduce the distance the drop shadow is offset from the object. Drag the slider to the right to increase the offset distance. The size of the drop shadow is dependent of the object to which you are adding the shadow. Something flat, such as a photo, will call for a smaller shadow. Something thicker, like chipboard or a fabric flower, will need a bigger shadow in order to convey the idea of height from the page.

6. Drag the Blur slider to the left increase sharpness of the drop shadow edges and to the right to increase the blurriness of the drop shadow edges. Again, the amount of blur of the drop shadow depends on the object on which you are applying the shadow.

7. Click OK.

8. Because the drop shadow is on its own layer, it is advisable to Group it with the object. If they aren't grouped, the image can end up getting accidently moved & that can be frustrating. They are grouped by holding the Ctrl key & clicking on each layer (the image & drop shadow in this case), Right Click, and Click Make Group.

One of the different things about using drop shadows in Photo Editor, compared to other editing programs, is that drop shadow is on its own object layer. This gives the digital scrapbooker the ability to truly customize the shadows.

Here is an example of altering the drop shadow to make a hatpin look as if is sticking straight into the photo.

1. Drag your pin onto your layout. You can resize and/or rotate it if you would like. Erase the tip of the pin if needed.

2. Next, add the drop shadow to your image. Use the settings that you feel will best most appropriate. In this case, I chose a dark gray, and a larger offset and blur than I used with the flat photograph in the example above.

3. Select the drop shadow layer in the Object Palette. Click on Rotate/Skew and move the drop shadow to the right so that is appears to be set off the pin at an angle. Resize the drop shadow to make it slightly smaller than the pin. This adds perspective that the shadow is farther away than the pin.

4. Lower the opacity of the shadow. Select the shadow. Down in the lower right, change the opacity to 65%. Click on the selected area to make the change in opacity.

   In this layout, I set the opacity to 65%. You can see the soft gray shadow lying on the paper. Again, select both the pin and the drop shadow layers, right click and select Group. This is the finished image: