In today’s tutorial, we’re going to talk about REALLY lifting something off the page.  Distance shadowing, like in the example with the hot air balloon, is not difficult; they just take a few little tweaks to end up with this very cool effect that will make your pages pop!

sample by Elly

In Elly’s page using this month’s Uplifted Mega, you can see that she uses 2 hot air balloon images.  We’re going to replicate the one on the top right on a 12×12 canvas so you can duplicate it with some of the hot air balloons available in the Uplifted page kit that’s available throughout this month’s LAD.  Here’s how we’ll start.

First, in Elly’s document, she flips her balloon image horizontally so that the little bear is facing the other way.  To do this, with your balloon image open, go to Image – Image Rotation – Flip Canvas Horizontal.  Now your balloon is facing the other direction.

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0706 tutorial 2

Now, we’re going to place our balloon image on our 12×12 canvas.  I’m just working on a piece of turquoise cardstock for the sake of this tutorial, but you might be working on your finished layout by this time.  I’ve resized my balloon to about 40% of the original size so that it’s about the same size as Elly’s in her final layout.

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Let’s add a drop shadow to start with that we can warp and tweak a little bit so we can make the effect we want to.  My original shadow is pretty large, but you can experiment as to what works best for you.  Here are my settings:

Blend Mode: Linear Burn (black)
Opacity: 44%
Angle: 90%
Distance: 42%
Spread: 0%
Size: 84%

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Now we’ll manipulate the shadow to make it look like it’s further away from the page.  Just like in our last tutorial, we’re going to right click on the FX on the balloon layer in the layers panel and select Create Layer.

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Now your shadow is on it’s own layer in the layers panel.

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Now with your shadow layer selected, we will manipulate it so that it looks further away from your balloon.  With your transform tool selected (CTRL T or Command T), move your shadow down from your balloon so that it looks like it is far away.  You can click the checkmark to confirm your selection.

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Now, we’re going to blur that shadow so that the edges are not so strong and it looks like there is more distance between the object and the page.  Making sure your shadow layer is still selected, go to Filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur.

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This is where you will have to experiment a little bit to see how blurry you want your shadow to be; it will depend on how sharp you want your shadow and how far away you want it to appear.  I chose 65 for my radius this time.

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And there you have it!   Elly’s sample at the top shows it the best, but there is one of the ways to get that far off shadow look.  You can also play with the opacity of the shadow layer and bring it down a little bit so that it’s not as dark in order to make it look the way you want it.  I hope you have a wonderful time playing with shadows for things at a distance!  I can’t wait to see your layouts using your new skills.

Warmly,
Chere