Rule 2: Shadow is not imposition of the black color

On the Internet I saw some lessons on shadow imaging. They image shadows by setting black color in different proportions and different transparency. This is not correct. Shadow is an area where direct light does not reach to. And this means that this area is painted with the natural color of the object. It may even seem to be richer rather than the area where the light lies to, in case the object has rather bright own color.

Also while choosing the shadow color, one should pay attention to the fact that the object itself may reflect the light to the flatness partially. If the object is of a bright red color, for example, then it would reflect part of the red color to the flatness where the object is.

Examples of what should not be done:

And what should be done:

Short description on how to get shadows as on Pic 4a and 4b:

Pic 4a:
According to the first two rules, one should not make dark shadow of a black color. At the layer style toolbar we chose color overlay and then chose the color itself. We chose dark brown – one that the surface might have been without the daylight.

Pic 4b:
The main background is white, shadow color is grey. Red board also casts red color on the surface. That is why we duplicate the grey layer of the shadow, repaint it to the dark red color and erase those areas which are not close to the red surface directly. As a result, shadow near our board has a subtle red shade rather than far from it.

Rule 3: darker and clearer if closer

We are talking here not about point source of light but about distributed one by default. This rule comes from the physic peculiarities of light transmission from the distributed source.

The following shadow is made in this way:
Firstly we create a usual shadow layer. Then, far from the board, the layer is blurred. Right and left sides (far from the object, but close to us) are slightly wiped up with the help of eraser, in order to avoid too distinct sides of the shadow at the end.

There are other variants.


I would not call it wrong solution. Although it looks like the whole board simply overhang the surface under the daylight.



Here the board is lightened with the help of a distinct artificial source.