The Sketchpad - WetPaint

Adding Drop-Shadows to text

Drop Shadows - Page 1 | Page 2

Paint.NET Tutorials - Drop Shadows

You asked for it, you got it! Thanks to tk, a guest on the Paint.NET message board, I got my butt into gear and made a new shadow tutorial using features available in v2.5 and later versions of Paint.NET.

Example image

Cradon Flame:

This is just something I made with Paint.NET, and I added a shadow to it. Woot! Now, I'll step you through how I did it, so you can do it too!

Get the dust out'ch'ya feet!

That header doesn't make any sense, but go with me here...

Alrighty now, open up Paint.NET and make ready the image onto which you want to drop a shadow. This technique is pretty simple so long as the object you want to shadow is all alone on one layer. All you need to do is duplicate, desaturate, and blur. But, for instance, I wanted the body of this logo to have one shadow and the portions of the body of this logo were spread across 13 layers, and that wouldn't work at all. Thankfully, though, this is pretty simple to work around. (If your shadow recipient is already on one layer, you don't need to do this.)

If you need to "Flatten" a few layers together to make one object out of it, simply turn off the other layers so that only the portion you need is visible (if you have a solid background color, make sure that layer is hidden as well, or this won't work) and save it as a .png. Make sure you save it as a .png, because this will condense the visible layers into one flat image but preserve the transparency around the object. Now press [Ctrl]+[Z] to un-flatten your image, because you may still want to work with layers. Then select Layers -> Import From File and select your .png you just saved. Now you have a new layer with the contents of the layers you left visible.

These are the three portions of the image: The background gradient, the body of the logo, and the text (a black background was added behind the text so it could be seen). You may not have a "logo" per se to which you need to add a drop shadow, so from now on, I'm going to refer to the center section there as the "object." Now I know Paint.NET is a raster program and therefore there are no objects, but go with me on this one! Your object may be a bit of text, a block container, or your friend's head... Whatever. Regardless, the steps are the same.

Now, once you have all the pieces of your object saved into a .png and imported back in as one object, move it behind layers containing the individual pieces of your object. Here's a snapshot of the layer stack I had with this one, with a breakdown of what's what. Now you'll notice my "Shadow" layer is already a shadow. That's because I decided to make this image too late. Your imported layer should look like your object still.

Now if your object is already on one layer, all you need to do is duplicate the layer. It's so much easier for you!

Now once it's imported or duplicated and in place, go under the Layers -> Adjustments submenu and select "Desaturate" ("Black and White" for 2.6 Alpha users). This will make your object copy greyscale. Now under the Layers -> Adjustments menu, select "Brightness / Contrast..." and set the Brightness to -100 and Contrast to 0. Repeat this until the entire object is black. Once it's black, select Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian Blur and set the blur radius to whatever looks good with your particular image. When it looks about right, click OK.

All that's left to do now is position it. If you need to, draw a rectangular selection around the shadow and switch to the Move tool. Now you can scale, rotate, and reposition the shadow until it looks just how you need it. If you need to, you can change the shadow's opacity by double-clicking on the layer name in the Layers Stack and bringing the Opacity slider down.

Now, if you want your shadow to be a not-boring black/grey, head on over to Page 2 where I'll show you how!

And that's how you make a drop-shadow! Now, I realize that this tutorial is a very broad explanation of the basic technique in order to cover as many situations as possible, and it may not cover exactly what you need. If you have specific questions about your particular situation, or you need more explanation on a step, ask me by posting in this topic on the Paint.NET forum.

Drop Shadows - Page 1 | Page 2