Drop Shadows and Overlays

Hello,
I am trying to figure out how to add a drop shadow to an entire artboard and overlay both artboards over a background. Is there a way to do this in illustrator? I am trying to create natural looking artboards that do not look super "digital", just like this photo. Any help you might have would be so appreciated! Thank you!

KellyTexas wrote:
Hello,
I am trying to figure out how to add a drop shadow to an entire artboard and overlay both artboards over a background. Is there a way to do this in illustrator?
This is the Photoshop Elements forum.

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Does adobe air support drop shadows and blur?

Does adobe air support drop shadows and blur? I can see it on the swf on pc but I don't see it once I put it on the android as .apk. Thanks!

change your render mode to cpu and test.

Drop shadows and HTML5

When there is a Smart Shape with both a stroke and a fill, plus a drop shadow, the drop shadow looks like it only applies to the stroke. I have several such objects with fairly thick 3 or 4 pt stroke. The drop shadow should be behind both the stroke and the fill. To avoid this I've been creating two identical shapes when only one is needed. The bottom shape has a drop shadow and the top shape does not.
Does anyone know a better workaround that doesn't require so many shapes?

Hi Jay,
As you are used to, I double-checked what was my idea about those shadows: being simply a slightly moved duplicate of the original shape with the color, alpha and other settings you setup in the PI, Shadow accordion. I published to HTML5 and everything showed up as expected, here is a screenshot of that published version:
For the first smart shape I only decremented the Alpha more for the Fill in order to see better the duplicate, shadow image. The second one has no fill, but I customized the shadow color.
Could you post a screenshot of your different result?
Lilybiri

Rendering Drop Shadows and Text

You know... for a system that can play 16 video streams in HD and dynamically adjusts the playback quality to handle all of that to play in real time......
why does a drop shadow and crawling text require a render on 2 streams of SD video?
I'm editing plain NTSC 29.97 DV footage..... my sequence settings are the same as my clips... all footage plays fine and generates a green preview bar for when I start getting complicated..... but when i add a drop shadow....... no matter what.... no matter how many streams are on... (even if it's only one) red render required to play.
It just seems odd that it can handle so much more information than what a drop shadow seems to generate..... the same happens with scrolling or crawling text. Is there anyway to get this in a preview..... so i don't have to spend 4 minutes rendering something that might not even work the way I want it to in the first place?
FCP 5.1.3
G5 dual 2.7 - 17in MBP Mac OS X (10.4.8)

give it a couple more months
the drop shadow will be fine once the processing is offloaded to the GPU

Live effects such as Drop shadow and blurs convert to flatten images with giant clipping masks preventing edits?

Without reason and at great costs, live effects convert to unusable web style graphics. This is not photoshop. Is adobe moving to kill Illustrator in favor of PhotoShop style web graphics? Suddenly every time I open a template the drop shadow or Gaussian blur has been converted to transparent overlay with a giant opacity mask applied. In trying to repair the damage by releasing the opacity mask the whole graphic jumps to a black square? Not all of the effects do this, just newer templates. I first thought because a fellow artist creates her graphics in RGB work space that this was the cause. It is not. Now randomly this happens. What am I doing wrong that causes this.

No they are ones my company creates for products we carry. We print on the items. I need to center logos on the items and not the items and the shadow. I also need to update the items as time goes by. It used to be as simple as open the file and make the needed changes. Now I have to start from scratch on the items that self convert. Any time a computer file self converts to a different type of file you have a problem. Only certain templates have morphed like this. I'm sure it's something I'm not catching.

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 and Transparency in Illustrator CS4

here's what's happening in Illustrator CS4.
Create a new document
In Attributes, check overprint fill
Add any text
Apply a drop shadow
Dave as Illustrator EPS - during save, set Overprint to "Preserve"
Once saved, you get the dreaded white box behind the drop shadow.
Is there any way to preserve transparency in Illustrator CS4 when applying a drop shadow?

First why are you using eps which does not support transparency except as one bit?
Why not as ai or pdf?
But you can try to use a tiff preview and select transparent there but Macintosh preview should make it so automatially.
here is the difference the top is the eps and the bottom .ai

DROP SHADOWS AND VIDEO ISSUES

I am using Windows7 and ID CS5. I have discovered that having more than one drop shadow causes ID to redraw the entire page after every action. Move a text box a fraction of an inch and it redraws everything. This usually takes between 15-20 seconds to do. Has anyone else had this problem? I have 24 gigs of ram and dual video cards @ 1gb memory each and not sure why the drop shadows would cause this type of problem. Other than doing the layout and then adding the drop shadows at the end, any other insight would be appreciated.

You can check these settings:-
1) Turn off the preflight from the Windows-->Output-->Preflight
2) Change the Live screen drawing to "Never" under Edit-->Preferences-->Interface
3) Change the Display performance to "Typical" if it is set to "High Quality" , under View-->Display Performance

Can comboboxes have drop shadows, and if so, how (Flash Pro)?

Hi
Is it possible to give the drop down part a drop shadow? At the moment, mine blends a little too much into a datagrid.
Cheers

You can do it programmatically the same way you would assign a filter to any DisplayObject...
    import flash.filters.DropShadowFilter
    var cbFilter:DropShadowFilter = new DropShadowFilter ();
    cb.filters = [cbFilter];
Another approach sans AS3 for the same effect would be to just place cb inside a MovieClip and apply the filter to the MovieClip thru the properties panel
Though you will find that it only shadows the main element in both of those approaches, not the drop list portion with the shadow. To add it to the drop list portion you need to target that....
    cb.dropdown.filters = [cbFilter];

Why don't transparencies and drop shadows show right in pdf on Firefox ?

Hello,
We have display problems with transparencies and drop shadows in pdf that we upload on our website.
When these pdf are opened on Firefox the areas where we have used transparencies, drop shadows and color gradation end up in grey boxes.
This is a real problem for our society which only operates on the web.
You can find below some links to pdf that are particularly affected by this display issue :
- http://www.francebureau.com/doc/montserrat_bureau_ebenisterie.pdf
(grey boxes have appeared on the header, some pictures that were a bit transparent are missing on page 2)
- http://www.francebureau.com/doc/bureau_reglable_cervin.pdf
(same problem on the header, on page 2 color charts are completely lost in grey boxes, on page 3 same problems with the color charts)
- http://www.francebureau.com/doc/origami_fauteuil_pliable.pdf
(same problem on the header, on page 4 color charts are in grey boxes)
Viewed on different web browsers these pdf show fine.
The issue is that all our website and our turnover are based on these pdf documentations, which could be viewed by a customer using Firefox.
We are aware that changing our pdf viewer would be the solution but only for our computers and we cannot make all our customers change their pdf viewer.
Are you aware of this problem ?
Do you have a solution ?
Can you keep us in touch ?
Thanks

Hey I found out from the developers that this is actually fixed in version 29 via Bug 965861. Try the pdf viewer in the next version of Firefox, this will take care of that gradient. :-) Cheers.

Help!Can't figure out how to copy and paste a drop shadow behind an image in photoshop

I use illustrator most of the time. I'm designing a brochure and I've always embedded images, but now I'm trying to it correctly by linking them instead. So I have an image in ps as a tiff. I created a drop shadow for the image in illustrator. I want to copy and paste it behind the image into the same file so both are one file linked to the brochure. Also the drop shadow pastes as too small, then i also can't get it positioned right etc. Please explain how to do this step by step. I've been trying for hours to figure it out. thanks!

    What happened is this: my client emailed me the image as a jpg. I downloaded it, then right clicked "open with" - photoshop. It opened in photoshop. Then I saved it as a tif. (maybe i didn't need to do this). Then still in psd i went to image size - and made the image 6x4 inches (the image is supposed to be printed 3x2 inches on the brochure) . Then I made it 300 dpi resolution and kept the resampling box checked. Then I went to layer styles; drop shadow; and used the drop shadow menu to get it the size and placement and opacity i desired .It's just a plain rectangular drop shadow which is a little offset behind the plain rectangular photo. I did check the box where the image would drop out the drop shadow (or whatever it said:). The drop shadow is on the same layer as the image. Then behind all of it is a larger rectangle of the grey and white boxes, which show thru thru the drop shadow in psd. I'm assuming this is simply the artboard. Then i named it and saved it into a "links" folder which i plan to include in the folder containing the illy brochure file.
    Since the psd image is 6x4 inches, will it reset to 3x2 when printed to match the placed image size? Or should I size the psd image exactly like the illy placed image? Is the drop shadow in this case a blend like you were describing earlier?
    Did i do anything wrong in the process which will make the brochure print incorrectly, or am i being too confusing for you to know ? ))
    I'm so nervous about how it all translates from one to the other. Thanks in advance!

Why do I get a colored shadow behind shadow and feather transparency areas when printing?

Hello,
I've been pulling my hair out over this and finally went to my printer to ask if they had insight as to why this is happening. I'll include his reply here but would like to hear your expert opinions too!
When laying out a file in InDesign, I do a lot of overlapping, feather and some drop shadow and always get a colored shadow behind the transparency area when printing out from a pdf. These files are being designed for print, which is what I thought InDesign was created for - as an updated alternative to Quark and Pagemaker? Here is what the printer says:
"Ive taken a look at the file in question and the issues this lady is experiencing can not be resolved in InDesign. What she needs to do is build the background image with color overlays all in Photoshop as a Layered PSD. Then flatten it and pull it in to InDesign as a Tiff. Then she can place her text over the top of it. She needs to use image masks on the color overlays - for the areas she does not what the color to violate.
What it comes down to is these fancy design effects out of InDesign and Illustrator should never be used for printing. They can be used for web design. Reason is, they cause RIP problems. Things fall off the file and transparent areas go away just to name a few. This happens all the time."
I would appreciate any other viewpoints here. Can I really NOT use the shadow and feather functions in InDesign for print? Are there any other ways to approach this problem other than what is being advised here. It is SO much easier to produce the entire file in InDesign.
Here is a link to the pdf. If someone would like to see the original indd file, I can post it somewhere.
http://displaysunlimitedinc.com/test/panel_3_text.pdf
There is a 1 inch blur drop shadow on the black and white temple image; a 1 inch feather on the black and white screened back image behind the main text box; and no drop shadow or feather on the map at top right, yet I get a colored shadow behind all 3 of these areas when I export the indd file to pdf and print that out. The fact that I get a shadow behind the map puzzles me.
Thank you very much in advance.

Horgycat,
The CMYK/RGB question is actually pretty complex, and depends to a great extent on how the final output is going to be produced.
If the files are destined for a printing press, all RGB elements must be converted to CMYK prior to printing. You have the option of doing that before placing in ID, or during export to PDF, and there are pros and cons to both methods, but if you don't know until the last minute what the print conditions will be, the convert on export path is more flexible.
Spot colors are a different matter. As far as I'm concerned, you should NEVER specify a spot color unless you are actually using spot ink on a press. A lot of inkjet and laser devices claim to be Pantone certified, but the reality is that even with expanded gamuts available using more than four inks, I'd estimate that better than half the Pantone solids are not reproducible as simulations that would satisfy me or my clients. The convert spot to process route should only be used, in my opinion, when you've designed a job properly to be printed using spot colors, and suddenly you have an output change or an added image that forces you to move to a process output. The last time I tried it, by the way, I had issues at the printer (the regular prepress guy was out of town, so I'm not sure what went wrong) and I ended up re-building the file with real process colors to get the transparency to work.
But you mentioned that you are doing exhibition panels, which implies to me that they are probably NOT going on a press -- you need to do hundreds, or sometimes even thousands, of copies to make a press cost-effective compared to digital printing. I used to work in a large-format output bureau doing just this kind of work, and we used large inkjet plotters. In this case, mixed RGB and CMYK files are less of an issue since most plotters will handle either, and depending on if they have an internal or external RIP or none at all, you may actually get better color fidelity using RGB as CMYK colors may get converted in the RIP to the RGB values that the plotter understands, and then get converted back a second time to CMYK (CMYKOG or whatever ink combination is used) internally before the ink is sprayed. Only the print provider would be in a position to tell you the correct color space for the equipment.
Which of course puts you at a bit of a disadvantage working with a client out of state who isn't supplying you with such necessary information as the correct output profiles for the job. It will be a miracle if the color is close.
A final word about looking funky on screen. Just as many spot colors can't be well simulated in CMYK, many also cannot be displayed adequately on a monitor. The ONLY way to choose spot colors is with a swatch book, and that's what the press operator will be using to verify his work. Clients need to be educated about the differences in technology and the limitations of soft proofs.

Button drop shadow transparency

I am trying to create a button that has an adjacent shape that has an InDesign drop shadow that overlays the button. It appears that this transparency is not supported as the shadow is not visible on the iPad. I have also tried to create an inner shadow in the button and that isn't working either.
Can you provide a workaround to achieve this? I imagine I can build the shadow into the button in Photoshop but I'd prefer to not build this element in Photoshop if I can avoid it.
Thanks.
Josh

Thanks very much for your assistance, Uwe.
I have tried PNG, JPEG and PDF folios and have the same results with each.
The examples that am providing have rectangular button shapes in InDesign with an inner shadow assigned.
InDesign CS 5.5
Folio Builder 12.2.4.20120611_m_691037, 7.5.5.19
Adobe Content Viewer on iPad 2.5.0
Adobe Content Viewer on Mac 2.4.0
iPad 2
Here are some visuals.
Buttons InDesign Preview mode:
Buttons with frame edges on:
Button settings:
Button inner shadow settings:
Two buttons overlapped. I confirmed that the issue still exists when the buttons aren't overlapped. I will update these so they don't overlap.
Resulting buttons in Folio on iPad:
Resulting buttons in Folio on Mac:
Thanks for your assistance with this.
Josh

Photoshop Elements 7: Newbie Needs Drop Shadow Help, Please

Hello.
I'm brand new to Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and need help with the Drop Shadow feature, please.
I've read the documentation, but it's not crystal clear to me, so maybe someone can guide me through it.
I want to create text on a blank white canvas, and add a little bit of drop shadow to it. That's all I want to do--plain and simple.
I can create the text, but I can't for the life of me find any drop shadow options.
The documentation I'm using is the on-line, web-based help. I type in Drop Shadow in Search, and select Add Text to a Slide.
The third step says, "In the Properties palette, set any of the following options" and then offers some options, including Drop Shadow and Drop Shadow Color.
I'll be darned if I can locate the Properties palette. Obviously, I'm not well-versed with Photoshop, so if anyone can just steer me towards this feature, I'll take things from there.
I know this is probably rock-bottom basic, but I'm stumped. Thank you!
J. Danniel

I need a lot more help with this than I thought.
The problem I'm having is this: After creating the drop shadow effect, when I try to save the image as a transparent GIF, it quite simply.... looks horrible.
Here is what I'm doing in detail:
1. New/Blank File.
2. Blank File is set to transparent. (Is this the right way to make a transparent GIF?)
3. Creating text.
4. Cropping text.
5. Selecting drop shadow effect.
Now, here's where I get confused. Do I just select File/Save As, or File/Save For Web?
When I just use File/Save As, and select the GIF format, the drop shadow effect in the final file looks horrible when I embed the image into a web page. The text looks good, and the file is transparent, but the effect is ugly.
When I try to use Save for Web, there is a Before/After screen. The Before side looks decent; the After screen looks horrible, too.
So, now I don't know what to do. Can you or anyone guide me through this a bit further, please? Thank you! Jd

Drop shadow effect--I can't get it to stop!

So I have successfully used the drop shadow effect in PSE 6.
But I can't figure out how to disengage this effect. I started using the clone stamp tool after I was done with drop shadow, and now all of my clone stamps have drop shadows!
I don't want no more drop shadow. How do I get it to stop? I've looked and looked and don't see anything obvious. Thanks.

JimSned wrote:
Thanks! That worked.
But there must some way to disengage those effects after you're finished using them.
They usually don't hang around. I'm glad resetting the tool solved the issue.

Drop Shadows and Overlays

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