Aviary - Forums

Sticky: Basic Shadows 6 replies

meowza posted 1 year ago

Here's a few tips on creating basic shadows in Phoenix.

For my example, I'll attempt to place the apple into the following street pic.

First, I'll extract my apple and place it where I want.
You can extract the apple using a number of different methods. I used the method described here .

So first thing I do is fill in the shape of the element we want shadowed in black.
I did this by selecting the outside of the Apple with the magic wand, then pressing Ctrl+i to invert my selection so only my apple was selected.
I used the Fill tool to create my base.

To place the shadow where I want, I used the Distort Tool.
Following the car's shadow as a guide, I made sure my apple's shadow follows the same light direction.

I then dropped the Alpha of this layer to about 45%, to match the car.
But we can see the car's shadow has a strong blue tint to it. So we want to emulate that for ours.
I did this by first selecting my color.
Using the Eye Dropper Tool, I selected some of the blue from the car's shadow.

I selected the apple shadow with the magic wand, and on a new layer I filled the area in with the blue color.
Setting this layer's blend mode to Overlay, the apple's shadow took on the same hue of the car's shadow.

meowza posted 1 year ago

Because shadows are never uniform in tone, I applied a light Gradient over it.
Making sure the base of the shadow closest to the apple remains darker and lightens slightly as it reaches the furthest point.
I did this by applying a Gradient fill on a new layer and setting this layer to Overlay.

Because we've already determined the light is coming from the top left of the apple, we need to hide the back of the apple in shadow as well.
So I selected the apple once again and with a black brush set to only 4% alpha, I lightly painted in the back of the apple a little shaded area.

And on the left and top sides where the light would be hitting the apple, we painted in these areas in white and applied the Overlay blend mode to make these sections pop as if they're being hit with the sunlight.

And finally, I did the same on the bottom, painting in a slight reflection of the concrete onto the reflective apple surface.

And that was that. An apple that fits a little nicer into his environment now.

Layered file.

If you have your own techniques or secrets for drawing shadows, share them!

Efreak posted 1 year ago

Seeing as I'm the first person to notice this, I think I'll make my comment kinda useless; I'm that kind of person: Where did you find an apple that was such a bright yellow color?