REAL shadow

hi there.

these days i'm working on my little b&w artwork only using photoshop (see below). now i try to add some shadow to the figure. this shadow should look quite realistic.

in the image you see the figure four times. original top left. in three steps i tried to get the shadow but somehow it doesn't look good enough.

is there a way to get better results?
perhaps someone knows a good tutorial about that?
yours tigercat.

Hi Tigercat,
Not sure if this is exactly what you are after (see attachment) but here is what I did:

• Duplicate the layer with the 'pawn' and place it behind the original layer. Hide the original layer for now.

• Hold 'ctrl' (pc) or 'cmd' (mac) and click your copied layer.

• Hit delete to get rid of the image. (don't deselect)

• Select your gradient tool and create a gradient from black to white stretching past the top of your selection. You may need to fiddle with the opacity of the layer to get the right sort of shadow.

• Deselect and goto Filter>Blur>Guassian Blur. I used a radius of about 2.5 pixels but again it is up to you. Click OK

• Hold ctrl/cmd and press 'T' for free transform.

• Hold ctrl/cmd and grab the top centre handle of the transform box and drag it to the right or left until you have the angle you want.

Hope this helps you out

**EDIT: For some reason I cant upload the file, so I will try again later.

Maybe this link will help - scroll down to the 'Cast Shadow' tutorial:

http://www.esoul.org/tutorials/#

HTH

hi there

djflorian
thanks for your 'few-step-tutorial'. the method is good if i have my spotlight in front of the pawn. but mine is situated somewhere left. so somehow i could not succeed in painting my shadow rightside.
despite that i would be glad if you tried to upload your work again.

red hot sheep
I followed the tutorial you mentioned. see the result in the top of the picture. seems to get nice results if the angle (from vertical to horizontal) is not too big. but my shadow should turn up to 80° or higher (see the small corridor on bottom part of picture).
So the mentioned method in the tutorial only works for angles up to 70°

REMAINING PROBLBEMS:
- how to draw my shadow almost horizontal (see corridor) keeping the shape of the pawn
- the shadow on the base of the pawn is not quite real. is it time to use 'distort' or 'skew' a little bit on the base shadow?

any further suggestions will be appreciated.

I see what you mean tigercat.

Well below is the image anyway. you could probably do some rotating and skewing to get the desired effect.

hi there.
thats exactly the point.
after several tries i know my limitations in modifying a selection. just using 2D.
thanks for all ideas.
tigercat

hi there
for those of you who are interested in the result - as good as i could do - here the answer.

i did it by using the original shape
rotating it about 85 degrees
using skew and scale on the selection
and finally applying some gaussian blur and layer mask.