Photoshop Effects: Telling Stories With Shadows

Step 9: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter To The Shadow

Now that our shadow is in place, there's only a couple of problems remaining. One is that the edges of the shadow are much too sharp, and the other is that the shadow is too dark and intense. Both of these issues are easily fixed, so let's work on the edges first. With "Layer 2" still selected in the Layers palette, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur.

This brings up the Gaussian Blur dialog box. We're going to soften the shadow edges by blurring them, but we don't want to blur the edges too much, otherwise we'll lose too much detail in the shadow and it will be tough to make out the shape. All we want is a subtle amount of blurring, so set the Radius value to somewhere between 2 and 6 pixels, depending on the resolution of your image. I'm using a low resolution image for this tutorial, and for me, a Radius of about 2.5 pixels works well:

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Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. Here's my image after softening the edges of the shadow with Gaussian Blur:

Step 10: Lower The Opacity Of The Shadow

Finally, to reduce the intensity of the shadow, simply go up to the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette and lower the opacity of "Layer 2". I'm going to lower mine down to about 35%:

And with that, you're done!

Here, after lowering the opacity of my shadow, is my final "Telling Stories With Shadows" result:

And there we have it!

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