Photoshop :: How To Drop Shadows Without Banding For Offset Printing
Jul 11, 2013
I like to make drop shadows under our products on our brochures. While they look great on screen, they suffer from banding on the printed pieces via offset printing. Here's how I make them now in CS6:
Create a layer under the main image.On this layer use Rectangle Marquee tool to create box in location of desired shadow.Hit Shift + F5 and Fill with Black.Deselect the black filled box.Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and select a radius of 40-80 depending on the size of the image.Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and select a distance of 125 -250 depending on the size of the image. Also select appropriate angle to match image.
I've talked to my printer and they said this is fine but they also said to make sure I'm filling the box with only K and not RGB (which I am) and to adjust opacity so it's below 25%. The problem is when I set the opacity of the shadow layer to 25%, the shadows are barely visible. This is not what I want. I want a nice dark shadow under the main portion of the product and the fading out to nothing. The way I do it now looks great on screen so how do I get it to look great on paper?
I've learned from the forums that it's best to separate drop shadows from their objects for printing, and even better to then convert them to bitmaps. Since this is a very old solution, I was wondering if X5 has a way to do this to all drop shadows on a page (or all in a document) instead of having to do it manually one by one.
How do Corelians get around losing the editability of the shadows with this workaround?
I am trying to create a station-offset label style that will drop the trailing zeros in the offset section - e.g. 15' instead of 15.00', but if the offset is not at a whole number, e.g. 15.01, etc. it will display the entire offset.
I created two expressions: IF(OFFSET-TRUNC(OFFSET)=0,.1/12,.00000001/12)
and this one: IF(OFFSET-TRUNC(OFFSET)!=0,.1/12,.00000001/12)
I then created two offset components, one called truncated, and one called full, and assigned the heights to match the expressions.
I have attached the file, the style is ACHD-Sta Off-Rt [copy]
I found great use with the Drop Shadow ability. Especially when used with text; a nice soft, lighty blurred drop shadow would do wonders for the overall image.
But too many times do I see graphics with that ugly, heavy, and greatly offset dropshadow. Sure enough it actually DETRACTS the realism from the image.
I don't get drop shadows. I can apply a drop shadow to an object on a layer, then if I apply a drop shadow to another item on another layer the drop shadow on the first item is changed to be the same as the new drop shadow that I am applying to the second object/layer.
Why does a new drop shadow, on a different layer, affect a previous drop shadow on a separate layer? How can I apply different drop shadows to different layers?
i am trying drop shadows on text. but when i go to add a second drop shadow to text in a new location. i cant move the shadow without the earlier drop shadow moving too. also is there a way to stretch a shadow longer?
I have several images of different sizes that I need to put drop shadows on. The thing is, I need all of the drop shadows to look the same. When I plug in the same options for the drop shadows, they all come out looking different. Is there some math I can do to make them look the same?
I'm trying to make a file have a drop shadow appearing on both sides. So, naturally I duplicated the layer & flipped it. This flipped the drop shadow underneat. Undo. I manually changed the drop shadow on the new layer to point the other direction. The layer beneath again followed suit.
I have purchased several vector images. I want to know how to apply an antialias and a drop shadow to the edges of the image.
So far, I have taken the original image to Photo Editor and made the white background transparent (this is the only way I know how to do this).
But when I take the .gif file to photoshop - because the image is on a transparent rectangular background, I can only seem to antialias and drop shadow the edges of the rectangle! How do I 'get into' the actual image to play with it?
I've been using Adobe Photoshop CS5 for the last two years and I've started getting a strange banding effect on my prints. Photoshop seems to be the only application that is effected. I print on a large format printer, my drivers are up to date, if I print a smaller size and fit to page (test print) the print is ok. When I print to full size I start having the problem.
In CS6, I tried this option with the lightest UI color (and with other UI colors), but I could not see the effect of this option on the texts of panels on the UI.
I still can not see the effect of it in CC,Am I looking at the wrong place ... it is controlling the drop shadows of the panel titles, isn't it?
I'm creating a text layer, and then applying a simple drop shadow to it. but when i create an alpha channel it ignores the dropshadow and only creates the alpha for the basic text.
i know its possible using the "magic wand" but i have to apply this to over 100 different *.psd files so want to be able to easily automate it..
at present to create an alpha channel i use CTRL + the relevant text Layer, then go to CHANNELS + SAVE SELECTION AS CHANEL
Any else out there illustrating custom drop shadows may have encountered this. If I do a hard drop shadow ro in RGB does not happen as much. When I convert to cmyk happens more.
Have had some success by rather than going form 0,0,0,0, to 1,1,1,1,, I curve correct to from 0,0,0,0 to 0001 then to 1,0,0,1. I do not think this is a monitor collaboration issue, as have had this problem forever on so many different systems.
Below is a screenshot (i darkened the right half so you could see better).
I tried many different techniques all same result. Brushing with a 0% hard large brushgaussian blurring default black on a layer set to 11% opacity running all the blurs over and over again using eraser set to 0% hard adn large brush feathering a selection spatter filter in rgb mode, then covert to cmykadding noise .
I am working with vectors from AI as smartobjects in PS. In CS6 the dropshadow effect started to look weird.It's to dark, offset and to big. If I scale the smartobject in PS the dropshadow changes, too. But it's never as it's supposed to be.Here is a screenshot. Left is AI, middle PS CS5, right CS6. URL....
Is there a setting I have change to make PS CS6 handle smartobjects with effects nicely again?!
I find one of the changes to the interface quite unfriendly for pen/tablet use. The drop-down menus for File, Edit, Image, and Layer are offset to the right of each menu item's live area. That means having to be extra careful when moving the cursor down the list so the menu doesn't accidentally snap closed. The remaining drop down menus are flush right with the item's live area, so they don't present the same problem.
I killed the annoying tabs feature and that doesn't affect the offset pull-downs. Illustrator has the same behavior, so I assume the offset behavior is consistenet through the CS4 applications. Nope. Bridge CS4 doesn't have the offset. Nor does Acrobat Pro.
It's nice that in an era of multiple and large displays that Adobe's interface designers were inspired to try and free up interface workspace. But a little interface design detail like this offset is a daily aggravation that doesn't have any benefit that I can discern.
I'm having problems with transparencies and drop shadows when publishing to PDF. Look at the attached picture: the text beneath the transparent shape looks jagged; same with drop shadows. This happens only with PDF/X-3 format; I would choose Acrobat 6 or 8 format, if I could, but that is the file format the printer service wants.
I am totally NEW to paint.net- but I am attempting to replace a macromedia fireworks drop shadow effect- I am familiar with FW and photoshop "ish" but not paint.net.
Yes I have d/l the plug in and I see the option for drop shadow- but it doesn't seem to apply to the object- yes I have created another layer...what am I missing?
I would like the image to appear as it did before - [URL] ..... with a variable width and variable gradient shade of black/ grey. Also if I can create an animated gif in paint.net- as is shown here: [URL] .....
I want to be able to do easily editable drop shadows directly in illustrator without having to import files from photoshop...i checked help and it says it should be one of the effects available to me under "stylize" but all i see there is "glowing edges"...i checked my effects gallery and not available there either. I know i can duplicate the text and put it behind original, take down transparency and maybe add a blur but i would like just a simple drop shadow that i can adjust quickly..
LR 4.2: I'm using one of the HTML web gallery templates, with drop shadow switched on for the thumbnails. The drop shadows are rendered fine online with all my browsers EXCEPT IE8, whey are just not there.
I am not a master of Photo-Paint, I use Draw for most tasks, but here I think Photo-Paint would be the right tool. I want to resample an image and then add a 7 px drop shadow to it and then export it as a PNG for web (transparent drop shadow). The problem I encounter is at the export stage, as the whole paper size is exported, not just the object selected, as is the case in Draw. Is there any other option than to place the object in the upper left corner (coordinates 0, 0 ) resize the paper size to fit and then export?
I just tried to do some work in X5 and when I tried to add a drop shadow to beveled text, you can't edit the drop shadow. The shadow tool bar is grayed out except for the presets drop down. Also when I try to export an image the program add pixels to the image.
Test file dropshadow_replace_demo.cdr contains a yellow rectangle with a black drop shadow, all in RGB,
Run Edit > Find and Replace with the options Replace Objects > Replace a colour model > Any colour model, replace with CMYK.
The rectangle will be converted to CMYK but the drop shadow remains stubbornly as RGB.
Of course there are third party replacers which are easier to use and probably work better, but the built in replacer ought to work properly on all objects that CorelDraw supports and not just some of them.
