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Let's talk about how you shadow ...

Angie and Dalis, you just described my shadowing style exactly. Lorry, thank you so much for your generosity!! I will play with your action in my next layout. :)
 
I definitely do a lot of shadow edits. I edit my personal shadows per element or paper then warp/ blur the shadows.
My 3:
papers
leaves
tabs/journal strips
 
Only lately have I started to use "my own" shadows in photoshop, I still find it cumbersome and time consuming, so and extra thank you to Lorry for sharing !
But I do like to shadow paper and elements that are supposed to be in the foreground .

In CraftArtist it is a much easier process, you get a special mini toolbar for tweaking your shadows, and it makes the whole thing easier, and more fun too.

sorry cant link without showing the page.
 
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I'm too lazy to tweak shadows. Plus I don't think I have a good eye for that kind of detail. I can see the difference on pages by others, but I can't tell if I'm going too far or not. I'm happy with being lazy and using styles!
 
question- do you change how you shadow for darker papers? I have the hardest time shadowing stuff when it's on top of a dark paper.
 
For darker paper/elements, I do a linear burn in a dark color (dark black or dark brown) and only slightly blur so a darker edge is visible.

For lighter elements/paper, I often do an orange/brown shadow on a page that has lots of warm tones.
 
I'm a tweaker ( not in the HBO sense ;) ). I mostly use my own styles and I add basic shadows as I go, which is different than when I first started scrapping when I saved it all for the end. I find that if I add as I go I get a better sense of the page coming together, and then I tweak at the end. ( multiple layers, warping, brushing etc ) I usually don't go crazy if I want to mimic paper (no floaters) I just try to make sure that things aren't too perfect.
 
I love shadows and sometimes I'll have a page where I mess with every shadow and some pages I just use my shadow presets and that's it.... most of the time it's somewhere in between. The most wonderful thing that I "found" recently is the "scale effect" option! It's always been there but I guess I didn't actually "see" it until last week lol! So I might put the same "paper shadow" on all my papers and then play around with the "scale" which is great because it retains the same effects for everything but I can adjust for paper size and distance from background for example! oh, and my top 3 things to mess with shadows on are papers/tags, strings (and other string like elements) and then flowers.
 
You all have inspired me to try the warp tool a little bit. I've generally spent some time shadowing the more dimensional items on my pages but hadn't really used that tool. I'm liking how they are turning out.
 
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