Cast Shadow Tutorial in Adobe Photoshop

Step 1

Open your image and remove it from the background.

Step 2

Duplicate the layer by dragging tot the new layer icon in the layers palette.

Step 3

Make sure the foreground color is set to black

Now fill the new layer by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Delete Mac:Cmd+Shift+Del (The shift key will make it only fill where there are pixels aka preserve transparancy)

Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur, amount of 3-5

Step 4

Now to distort the shape. (If you are going to do this to text, you must render the type first)

Press Ctrl/Cmd+T, this will bring up the free transform tool. Right click on the selected object Mac:Cmd click. Select "Distort" from the pop-up menu.

You will see a bounding box with 8 little squares, click and drag the top left and top right squares (called handles) until it looks similar to the picture on the left. Press Enter/Return to apply the transformation.

Step 5

Duplicate the shadow layer. Drag to the icon again.

Apply the gausian blur again, this time add a larger setting 5-10

Step 6

We now want to make the shadow softer as it gets further away.

Go back to the top shadow layer and add a layer mask.

Using the gradient tool drag it from right to left to blend the 2 shadow layers.

Step 7

Finally Set the shadow to multiply mode and the opacity of the top shadow layer to about 50% and the bottom shadow to about 30%

Experiment and see what looks best for your image.