Summary: Learn how to truly make a picture worth a thousand words by adding a different shadow behind someone in a photo, as if the person will one day become the image in the shadow! A fun, easy and popular Photoshop effect that's limited only by your imagination!

Written by Steve Patterson
Exclusively for Photoshop Essentials.com.

Part of our complete collection of Photo Effects tutorials.

In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, we'll learn how to truly make a picture worth a thousand words by adding a different shadow behind someone in a photo, as if to imply that the person in the photo is one day going to become the image in the shadow. Or maybe they really are the image in the shadow but they manage to keep it hidden from everyone, sort of a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" scenario. Or, as in the case with the image I'll be using in this tutorial, perhaps the person is imagining themselves as the image in the shadow.

This is a really fun and popular effect to create in Photoshop, and you may remember seeing it used heavily a few years back in the promotional posters for "Star Wars, Episode I - The Phantom Menace", where a very young and innocent looking Anakin Skywalkwer was casting the shadow of Darth Vader behind him. Fortunately, you don't need to be a special effects wizard to create the same effect with your own images. All you need is a copy of Photoshop and a little imagination.

Here's the image I'll be using for this Photoshop tutorial:

Obviously, this little guy sees himself as a mighty super hero, so let's help him out by projecting a super hero shadow on the wall behind him:

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Let's get started!

Step 1: Make A Selection Around The Person

With your image open in Photoshop, use the selection tool of your choice (Lasso Tool, Magnetic Lasso Tool, Pen Tool, etc.) to draw a selection around the person:

Step 2: Copy The Selection To A New Layer

If we look in our Layers palette, we can see that we currently have just one layer, the Background layer, which contains our image:

We need to copy the person in the photo onto their own layer above the Background layer so that we can slide a shadow in behind them, which we'll do in a moment. Since we've already drawn a selection around them, all we need to do is use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac), and Photoshop will copy the selection onto a new layer. Nothing will seem to have happened to the image itself, but if we look again in the Layers palette, we can see that a copy of the boy (in my case) is now on a new layer, which Photoshop has named "Layer 1":

Step 3: Open The Photo Containing The Person Or Object You Want To Use For The Shadow

To create the shadow effect, you'll need a second image containing whatever it is you want to use as a shadow, whether it's a person or an object of some kind. I want to give the boy a super hero shadow, so I'm going to use this image here which should work nicely: