Working With PSP 2018 3D Effect: Cutout

[Linda Lou]

I've been trying to give more depth to my cutout images (as if looking into a pail). Adjusting the Shadow Color, Offset, Opacity, and Blur either gives me not enough feathering, or makes the entire inside edge too light or too opaque.
I tried adding a shadow to the top, but I can't seem to get that to look right.
The Help info mentions a script, but that only gives a shadow outside rather than inside the image.

My current Cutout settings are:
Vertical and horizontal: 6
Opacity 70
Shadow Color: Black
Blur 15 <-- How to get wider feathering on this upper left edge shadow so that about 25% inside circle is in a shadow??

cutout.PNG (10.78 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

[hartpaul]

You probably need to experiment with your offset values. Do either of these approach what you are after?:

The left one shows a 40 , 40 offset,
The right one shows four cutouts 10,10 ; 10, -10; -10,-10; -10,10.

[Linda Lou]

Thank you for jumping in on this.
Your first one covers the approximate area, but I'd like it to be more transparent along the inner side.
I'm still experimenting and wondering if once I get the cutout should I duplicate the circle in black or gray on a new layer and use the eraser tool with a low hardness?
Here is a small section of a cutout circle showing the type of shadow that I'm trying to do.

cut-out shadow sample.png (7.89 KiB) Viewed 1304 times

[JoeB]

This attachment is done with @hartpaul's 40-40 offsets, opacity set to 40 and blur set to 100. Is this closer to what your last image looks like?

[Linda Lou]

Yes! That is very close. Thank you, hartpaul and Joe. You made my day!

[JoeB]

Glad we could help. You can play around with the offsets and opacity a bit to tweak it a bit more if you want. You will likely need the 100 blur but you can try lowering it also if it gets you what you want.