Drop Shadow

[tonyunderwood8]

Hi there, sorry to submit such a noob question. I'm trying to create a dropped shadow to an image (not a selection or text but to the whole image), to give the image that 3D mounted look, so the dropped shadow is to be on just the bottom and right side of the image. I have managed to do this to the point of having the dropped shadow where i want it, but the whole image (including the dropped shadow) still has a white border around it, and i can't seem to get rid of the white border. I can see how this is done in Photoshop (which i have but want to kick into touch so that i can concentrate solely on PaintShop Pro), and though i'm getting to close to my objective, i just can't seem to grasp that final step.

[hartpaul]

Is this aomething like what you are after?

Otherwise do it in Photoshop and do a cropped screenshot and post here to show what you are trying to do.

[tonyunderwood8]

Hi yes that's exactly what i'm trying to do, but the part of your image that's showing as a chequered border is showing as a solid white border on mine, and i'm going round and round in circles trying to figure out what i've done wrong and how to get rid of it.

[hartpaul]

1. Load your image(Image A) onto your workspace and roll your mouse wheel to scale it down in viewable size.
2. Window > make sure Tabbed Documents is Unticked.
3. File > New to make a new document/ image and make it larger than your original Image A. I made mine with 200 extra pixels all around. In that New Image dialog box lower right tick Transparent box. You will now have a transparent image a bit larger than your Image A. Scale it down so you can see both images on your workspace.
4. Make your Image A active and from your Layers Palette click on the image thumbnail and drag and drop it into your transparent layer . It will be copied and placed in the centre as a new image on a new layer.
5. Aplly your drop shadow. You can use the Move tool to move Image A around if you wish. You can also crop off any excess transparent areas. If you want to reduce it to a single layer and keep the transparency you must Merge Down or Merge Visible from your Layers Palette.

To also keep the transparency you need to save it as a .png filr or a pspfile. While you have the transparent layer beneath your Image A you can also fill that transparent area with a gradient , another color, pattern or a texture.

[JoeB]

As long as the image is a regular raster layer rather than a Background layer, couldn't you just increase the canvas size by several hundred pixels or whatever, transparent and centered, and then apply the drop shadow? I'm not sure I see the need to be creating a new transarent image and dropping the original into it. And to crop the image with drop shadow I think the easiest method is to use the Magic Wand set to All Opaque, click on the opaque part of the image, and crop to selection. Just another idea.

[tonyunderwood8]

That's absolutely brilliant!! Thank you VERY much

[hartpaul]

@Joe As it was uncertain what the OP was fully intending I used the new layer to allow moving of the image as required which could not be done if on a single canvas where there is also no choice to have a transparent background. So using the canvas method would then require selecting that canvas background, then promoting to a raster layer to allow transparency and finally deleting.

[JoeB]

Understood.