Working with shadow in photoshop

Today our tutorial will be about how to drop the right shadow in Photoshop and how to make a clean nice selection. This is a technical tutorial so we will get no pretty images in the end.

Let's start by creating a document and choosing a picture sample.



Here is our sample. Tap (Q) for quick mask and begin to cover the image with mask. Quick mask uses basic PS brushes, so if you like you can set the opacity, flow, spacing and so on. I will use brush without any settings.



Now refine the edges. You can tap X to toggle cover and erase mask in Quick mask mode.



Make the edges as rough as possible.

Now tap Q again turning the Quick mask off. As you can see now you have all the area is selected except the monument. Just select inverse.



Further and Smooth the selection. Just a little bit.











Now it's time to make a new document.



And just drag the selected image to our new document.



And here we have nice and clean edged image. If you are a graphic designer you will need this a lot of times. Remember to smooth the selection.

Now what we are going to do is to drop a shadow.

First define from where is the light coming from. But the picture is made in day time, so we have now direct lights, just the sun light. But anyway it has direction.