Photoshop Tips: Bent Shadow / Bent Photo Frame – Part 1

(Above photo made using Kate Hadfield’s Scrapping 9 to 5 Doodles.)

It’s Christa again with another nifty new trick to add some dimension to your beautiful layouts using the wonderful Kate Hadfield Doodles!

I do hope you are enjoying these mini tutorials to help you in creating wonderful Digital Scrap Pages and cards!

Are we ready to learn a new technique today? Don’t be scared as it took longer to write-up then it actually takes to do! Have patience with me, and hang in there. I promise you won’t be disappointed! Here we go!!!

Bent Shadow/ Photo Frames – Part I

This is an example of the ‘Bent Photo’ look we will be achieving.

When I began Digital Scrapbooking and making pages, I was always intrigued by seeing a photo that looked 3 dimensional on a page. The photo looked to me as if it was lifting off the paper. I was amazed at what could be done with a simple shadow!

Of course it is much easier to do this technique in Photo Shop CS3 (or above) as you have the ability to warp a shadow, and also create a layer which will split out any effects you apply to an image.  (I will touch on that in part 2 in the next tutorial to show how it can be done in CS3. For now I will concentrate on the other way as PSE and other photo software do not have that ability to warp.)

The fun thing I like is it is not only limited to frames either!! With a lot of scrappers doing PL (Project Life) or even placing a paper or journal card on your layout you can apply this technique to those as well. Even a circle tag!!!

Let’s begin!

• Decide what you want to apply the bent shadow to. I will be using a journal card of Kate Hadfield’s fromEveryday Journalers.
• Place the Journal card on your layout where you want it.

• Using the magic wand tool click anywhere outside of the yellow card, so you have marching ants surrounding the object. The rectangle marquee can also be used, however if you have an odd-shaped object, the marquee tool will not always be feasible.)
• Go up to the top of your tool bar and click on Select>Inverse, so the marching ants are directly around your object only.

Now comes the fun part!

• In your layer palette, add a new layer. This blank layer should be underneath the object layer. If you need to, slide the layer below the journal card.
• With ants still marching, and your blank layer highlighted, Flood fill with Black (Color code 000000).

• Deselect (ctrl D) or Select> Deselect  to shut off Marching ants.
• In layer palette, turn off the journal card layer (click on the eye to shut off) and highlight the black flood fill layer.

• Because PSE and other older versions of Photo Shop, (and other graphic programs) do not have the warp tool under Transformation, we are going to improvise.
• Instead of the top and bottom of the journal card we are going to bend it for the sides. In order to do this we are going to use the rounded marquee tool or the oval custom shape on another layer. Either will work, however you may feel more comfortable with the custom shape.  If you are using the oval marquee, make your oval with the top and bottom matching the corners of the rectangle.

• After removal of the half oval, with marching ants still marching go to Select>Transform selection in the upper tool bar. Move the selection to the right to do the right side. Once it is placed  where you want it, press enter to lock the transform selection. Then hit the Delete button to remove the other half of the oval.

• The same can be done with a custom shape but there are additional steps you need to do, make a new layer above the flood fill, then select the custom shape circle tool and draw the oval, then rasterize the layer and using the magic wand, select it so there are marching ants. You would then need to highlight the flood-fill black layer and then delete which will remove the half oval. Then you would need to delete the oval custom shape layer from the layer palette. Either way the results would be the same. (Screen shot below reflects it with the custom shape.)

• Either way you do it, the result should look like this:

•  Now we need to blur it. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set to about 8.0. <okay>

• Now we will need to scale the shadow we made. Turn on the journal so you have an idea. If you have blur poking out the top and bottom and nothing on the sides, you will need to push down and up to make height shorter and pull out on the left & right to make the shadow wider. Turn off the journal layer and transform the shadow layer. Go to Edit> Transform > Scale

• Add a layer to your palette and flood fill with white so you will be able to see the shadow scaling better. (Move this layer base- down to the bottom by going to Layer > Arrange > Send to back.)
• Turning off journal card element layer, and selecting shadow layer, go to Edit > Transform > Scale .  While making the adjustments again top and bottom will need to be pushed in down and up, and sides need to be pulled out – do a little at a time and turn the journal layer back on until you get it as you want it.

• Turn journal layer back on to check it, to make sure your journal card looks like it is bending. [You may have to keep “tweaking it” a little push or pull at a time, until you are satisfied.]

• Select the shadow layer in the layer palette. Change the blend mode to Multiply and set the opacity level to around 54% or to taste.

• Voila! Now you can group and move them to wherever you wish in your workspace and make your layout however you want.  You can burn the center line or dodge it for highlight however you wish to make it your own.

Here are some different examples I have done, to show you how you can have fun with shadows. Also experiment with  the distort, skew and perspective transformations on the shadows for other looks!

The sample above, uses some elements from Kate Hadfield’s Little Graduate.

Thank you for joining me today! Have fun, and if you have any questions, give a shout and I will do my best to answer!

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