Drop Shadow default

Is there a way to change the drop shadow default in FCP? It seems everytime I choose to use a drop shadow I have to set the parameters different from the default. I always use the same settings.

My work-around for this is to lay a title out at the end of a sequence, all set up with my shadow parameters, etc. When it's time to cut in a title, I razorblade off a little piece, pull it into position, add the particular type and pull it out to length. Or sometimes I set up the title, and then just paste it a number of times as needed, then change the type.
Kludgy at first, but you can get pretty quick with it.

Similar Messages

Changing Drop Shadow Default - PSE3, Mac

Is there a way to change the default setting on the drop shadow length of 21 to a lower number? 21 just is way too much for a layer with say an envelope. An envelope just wouldn't leave that large of a drop shadow! I'm much more likely to need to lower the size that to raise it to something over 21. Another question...is there a way to select another color for the outer glow colors?
Thanks!
Debbie

Debbie, et al,
When I spoke of "High" and "Low" it was in reference to two of the Drop Shadow presets found in the Layer Styles palette, in the Drop Shadows group. That being said, I have observed something else!
The distance of the drop shadow created is relative to the resolution of the image. The higher the resolution, the greater the drop shadow distance, in pixels, shown in the Style Settings dialog.
For instance, when I reported my earlier values of 29 and 5, I was working with a document with a resolution of 72ppi. When I apply the same High/Low styles to a document with a resolution of 300ppi, I get distances of 121 and 21 pixels, respectively. A resolution of 100ppi receives shadow distances of 40 and 7.
Thinking about it, it makes sense that the number of pixels of shadow "distance" would vary with the resolution, to represent a similar appearance for "High" and "Low" from image to image.
Of course, this will only complicate Debbie's issue of managing the initial Drop Shadow distance setting, because we now know that it varies with image resolution. *sigh*
Byron

Layer style drop shadow default black has 1 unit of green in it. Why is all the blacks in styles not pure black? ie

Like the title says, very frustrating to have to change every style back to black.
This happens on any document I open or create.
I am running Photoshop CS6 on Windows 7.

Changing default values in Drop Shadow

When using Drop Shadow in the Motion tab of the viewer I find that I never have used the default settings of the Offset or the Opacity. Seems like there must be a way to change these settings permanently so they come up to some more convenient settings.

I probably should have thought of that a long time ago. Darn good idea. Feel kinda dopey for missing that one. I use the favorites for transitions but never thought of putting the Drop Shadow in there.
Still, is there a way to change the defaults much like you can change the default length of stills that are imported? It would be useful on so many tabs in Motion and Filters.

How do I reset drop shadows to default setting, pse6?

Drop shadows have disappeared except for 'neon'; how do I get the default setting back?

Appearance settings have nothing to do with the program preferences. You simply reset them on the appearance panel or the relevant sub-dialogs of whatever effects you are using.
Mylenium

How can I change the default drop shadow settings in Illustrator?

When using Effect>Stylize>Drop Shadow on an image in a fresh document the default settings are pretty far from what I actually require. I very often work with tiny images so need a drop shadow that is about a fifth the size of what is offered on the first use.
Can I change the default option?
Presently using mac pro, mavericks with CC

Thanks for the pointer - will open a copy of said file, search for the values of the current defaults and tweak them; will report back results.

Drop Shadows and Color Copiers

If you have a color copier or color laser printer try this test:
1. Create a page in InDesign with a pale CMYK background (I'm using 40% C, 30% M)
2. Create a small white box on top of the background and rotate it 10 to 60°
3. Add a drop shadow with default settings (multiply 100% K at 75% opacity)
4. Export a PDF using ANY export settings you like
5. Print the PDF to your color copier out of Acrobat, again using any setting you like
What I get is a bounding box around my white square that is a slightly different color than the background tone. It is obviously the area that includes transparency because of the drop shadow, which is being rasterized either when the file is made into a PDF or when it is printed. This same PDF looks fine on screen in Acrobat and looks fine when rasterized into Photoshop: absolutely no difference in the color of the background visually or with the eye-dropper. This PDF also prints totally fine when I send it directly to my cheapo inkjet and when I drop it into my color managed RIP that runs our higher-end inkjets. I should add that there is no RIP in front of the 2 different color copiers I am testing. The same thing happens on a client's color copier.
What appears to be happening is that the color copier renders raster data differently than vector data, which results in this bounding box being visible. I've tried printing directly out of InDesign and indeed if I select "Print as Bitmap" in the advanced tab, the problem goes away. However, I need to be able to send out PDFs that will print correctly on any kind of office printer. Obviously I could rasterize the whole thing in Photoshop, but I've got hundreds of flyers to prepare, and they need to be small enough to e-mail and look good when printed.
There is no "Print as Bitmap" option when creating PDFs, and they would probably be too big anyway. How can I get the drop shadow effect to work correctly in this situation?
Thanks in advance!
-Todd Shirley

Thanks for the link Bob!
It ALMOST works. In the link a procedure is described for rasterizing the whole page by creating a custom Transparency Flattener Preset, which I would THINK would solve my problem. Unfortunately the only way to access Transparency Flattener Presets in the PDF export is to set Compatibility to Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3), which creates a PDF that my color copier won't print at all! It just hangs in whatever that thing has for a RIP. I left one for about a half hour and it finally came out all crazy messed up.
The goal here is to create a relatively small PDF that can be distributed to hundreds of offices and printed correctly on whatever kind of office machine they have. My Canon color copier is brand new and if it chokes on PDF 1.3 I can only imagine what older copiers will do.
So the quest continues! Is there any way to fix the problem without rasterizing the whole page? Or is there a way to rasterize the whole page but make a PDF 1.4 or higher? Keep the suggestions coming!
-Todd

Drop shadows on text do not behave in the same way to inner shadows on objects

I have piece of text with a drop shadow on top of a box which has an inner shadow. In both cases, the shadows are CMYK black, with 100% opacity, applied using the Multiply method.
When designing, things appear correctly (note background is CMYK magenta, but will change once this issue is resolved):
When outputting in the Press format, with everything left as defaults, then two issues are seen, firstly is the Yucky Box Problem, the second is the drop shadow has lost it's colour, and looks as it does if I choose Normal for the shadow type. Note the PDF viewer is Apple Preview in Lion:
If I embed the CMYK colour profile I'm using (Coated FOGRA39), then the YBP goes away, but the colour of the shadow is still wrong:
Finally, if I force the transparency to be flattened, it appears correctly but with a thin white line (note profiles are not being embedded in this case):
Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
What I would like to know is how to ensure the output is as it should be in the final case, but without the white line, i.e. without flattening. It's worth noting that if the text is located in the main, white, area of the page, then it works correctly in all cases (except the Yucky Box Problem situation which is easily resolved). Thanks in advance!

That seems to have resolved the problem. Interestingly, the 'Yucky Box Problem' doesnt seem to occur regardless of whether I'm importing the profile or not, I guess Adobe Reader is doing it's own stuff with the colour space which Preview isn't. Thanks again for your help!

Illustrator - drop shadow problem

Hi,
There is probably a really simple way to solve this but I can't work it out.
I have 6 brochure covers on the page, and I want to apply a drop shadow to all of them. When I do apply it however all images get darker, almost as if the shodow is being applied over the top rather then underneath. I have tired 'bring to front' etc, so that's not the issue. I've also tried placing a white box underneath the image, but thats not working either.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks

To what are you applying the drop shadow? Also, if the background colour of the covers is white, make sure you are not just using the default white background Illustrator provides, but that you have created a white-filled rectangle for the page.
Please post a screen shot screen shot. Turn on Transparency Grid (view menu) first.

Colored Drop Shadow on a Black Ground in CS5

I'm wondering if there's any way to create a colored Drop Shadow on a black ground in Illustrator. I'm using CS5 on a windows box. The Drop Shadow shows when I hide the black ground (of course) but I cannot, for the life of me, find out how to make it show on top of the ground, even after sendeing the 'ground' to the back. I've even tried the Black 'ground' on its own layer and have it at the bottom of the layers Palette.
I would appreciate any help if at all possible.

The drop shadows are set to Multiply Mode by default, I believe. Multiply doesn't show on black. If you change the mode to Normal you will see a coloured drop shadow. This will be found in the Drop Shadow dialog.

Drop shadow on a text box?

I'm not really sure what I did, but between last night and this afternoon, somehow, a drop shadow appears with my text boxes...I'm so confused, and I don't know what I did. I know that when a text box is drawn, there are no available options for effects, and I don't see it anywhere in my paragraph styles.
I'm running CC on Windows, if that helps. I'm in school and this is for a class assignment, so I need to get this fixed. Any ideas on where to look? Would a screen shot help? Thanks!

Open the Effects panel (Window > Effects). Select your text frame(s) and look for an "fx" icon on the Effects panel. Drag it to the little trash can icon to eliminate the effect.
You probably clicked the "fx" icon on the Control panel by mistake when nothing was selected, turning on that effect for default frames.

High resolution PDF still generates low resolution drop shadows?

I have created a series of print ads in InDesign CS5.5 to be run in magazines, and at the bottom of the page is the company's logo, with a drop shadow applied to it within InDesign. Nothing strange there. Upon exporting the PDF, I use the Press Quality settings which by default are made to create 300 dpi PDFs. The only changes I make in the settings is adding bleed and crop marks, I don't change anything that could affect the resolution or transparency settings. But still, the magazine's print-technician always replies that the shadows in my document have a low resolution.
Up until now I have told him to not worry and run it anyway, and the results have been fine - I haven't noticed any problems with the quality of the print in the magazine. But it really annoys me that I keep getting these error messages - I want to create perfect PDFs! Why on earth are my shadows ending up as low resolution images?
The only thing I can imagine might be a sign of an issue is under the Advanced-tab in my Export-settings. The Transparency Flattener section (which I, to be honest, am not quite sure what it is) is set to medium resolution, and is greyed out - meaning I can't change it to high resolution. Could this be what is causing it? And if so, how do I fix it?

I don't spend a lot of time with Acrobat's preflight, but it looks like it assumes what the flattener preset will be at output even though it could be anything.
The default Press Quality preset exports live transparency with the flattener grayed out as Medium and it looks like Acrobat preflight considers that even though nothing has been flattened yet. So, here I've made a 3" sqaure box and exported it with Press Quality and prefilght tells me it's roughly 200ppi (which by the way is plenty for a dropshadow):
If I change the preset to High (set the Compatibility to 1.3, which lets you set the flattener to High, then reset compatibility to 1.4):
Then Acrobat's preflight tells me the shadow will have more resolution:

Drop Shadow - how to achieve

There's most probably a simple answer to this question although for the life of me I can't think what. I've tried to online help file and achieving a drop shadow appears to be pretty straight forward but I'm just not getting it. I click on fx and when the dialogue opens click on drop shadow. All settings are at default and the small preview box responds (expands etc) in response to my adjusting the controls but no effect is seen on the image. I've tried changing the image from 16bit to 8bit thinking - well maybe - but no still no joy. Am I missing a setting somewhere?

Well that is simply an image with a white border like an old photo, and then an extra area (border) round the image so the drop shadow can be seen.

Odd greyscale behavior when drop-shadow is applied.

I have a file with four images in it. One is RGB and three are greyscale jpeg images. They all look fine.
Now, when I put a drop-shadow effect on the images, the RGB image looks as expected; but, the greyscale images all look lighter than before.
I exported a PDF of the two pages (I made a duplicate so one page has the shadow and one does not) with the PDF-X/1a profile. All of the greyscale images look lighter, even the page without the shadow, which looks darker in InDesign. The RGB image looks the same on both pages an in the PDF.
Why do the greyscale images look lighter when a drop-shadow is applied? Or, maybe a better question is, why does the image without the drop shadow look darker? (The darker image looks more natural. I opened the Greyscale images in both Apple's Preview and in Photoshop. Preview displays the nicer-looking darker image, but Photoshop shows the images as being lighter, the way it looks in the exported PDF.
Any ideas?

Thank you for this interesting discussion.
I set the Transparency Blend Space to RGB* and now all of the grayscale images look the same. They have all taken on the darker appearance. Until, of course, when I turn Overprint Preview on, in which case they all get lighter. In Photoshop, the image seems to be in-between the light and dark looks in ID.
You know, up until today, I was feeling pretty good about color on the computer, thinking all the problems of the past were behind us. Oh well!
Anyway, I have another question about Transparency Flattener Presets. It is set to Low by default in ID. I suppose this is to speed up rendering time. Now, when I export to a PDF there is a Transparency Flattener setting there, if the PDF is an X-1a file. In that case, does ID ignore the setting in the file under the Edit menu?
Also, I set the Transparency Flattener Preset in ID to High, but it always returns to Low when I check again. Why is this? (The Low, Medium, and High settings are surrounded by brackets, like this: [Low]. Does that mean anything?) So, what does the Transparency Flattener Settings affect? A print made directly from the file? The preview in ID? I thought I had all this down, but now I am a little confused.
*(BTW, this piece will be used as an outdoor poster on a kiosk and the media company has requested an RGB JPEG file, so I will be exporting this as a PDF-X/4 and then opening it in Photoshop before saving it as a JPEG. So, I know, the best thing to do is to convert the grayscale images as RGB files and maybe even adding a little tint, perhaps. But I am still curious about the other questions.)

Drop Shadows Look Too Solid When Printed

Designer newbie here with a drop shadow question. I am working on a project using vintage-style square photos with a white stroke and a drop shadow. It looks great on the screen but I just got a page back from the printer and the drop shadows are way too solid-looking on the paper. They almost look like grey boxes around the photo.
This is a personal project and every time I print, I have to go to FedEx Office to pick it up, so I don't want to just fiddle. I'm hoping you can help me. How do I get them to look more subtle? I tried lowering the opacity and they just looked like lighter gray boxes around the photo.
I am using Adobe InDesign CS 6Here are the settings I am using:
Thanks!

The High Quality Press preset exports color unchanged so a default drop shadow will export as CMYK black percentages. I'm assuming that the FedX printer is some kind of composite copier and it might not color manage device CMYK values very well. By default ID documents are set up for US SWOP web press printing, which the FedX printer is not.
I don't think there's an easy answer for you, but I would build a test sheet with a dozen or so boxes with different shadows. It's not unusual for composite digital printer to have trouble with CMYK values, so try some shadows with RGB as the color and export with the PDF/X-4 preset.
Also set your document's RGB profile to sRGB :

Drop Shadow default

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