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This Article Is Taken From The Game Programming MegaSite, A Definitive Resource For Game Developers!
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IÆve been using Photoshop for about 2 years now, and IÆve managed to figure out some little tricks that can be used to enhance graphics and to speed up drawing time. IÆll start off with shadows.
Many people are convinced that you need "Alien Skin" or "Eye Candy" plug-ins to create good looking shadows. Well, you donÆt. You can do them just as easily and just as well by hand. IÆm going to discuss two methods below. Both of them could be used to enhance graphics for video games, or just to create good looking web graphics.
First, create a layer. Then, choose the color of the text you want to create. Then, click on the Text type tool. Type in your text (of course, with anti-aliasing turned on) and hit "Ok". When the text is on the screen, move it to where youÆd like it to rest using the Move tool. Remember, depending on how big your shadow will be, the text might lose its centering afterwards. Accommodate for the shadow in your positioning of the text.
Now, create another layer. Position the new layer underneath the old one. Choose black as your color. Use the text tool to create the same exact text again, with the same size. Usually, this can be done by simply pressing "Ok" again. Now, position your shadow in almost the exact same place as the layer above. Move it a little bit away in any direction you want. This will give you the impression of a solid, black shadow. These are commonly used in magazines.
You can also lower the opacity of the layer so that it appears to be translucent. This looks good, especially when placed against a picture or background of some sort.
Although solid shadows look good most of the time, sometimes it looks really nice if you place down a smooth shadow. To do this, repeat the steps above to create the black shadow. When you have your black shadow placed down, you want to de-select it, so that you can draw in other areas of the same layer. In Photoshop 3.0, this is easy to do (CTRL-D), but in Photoshop 4.0 I find that the easiest way to do it is to duplicate the layer and delete the first one. If anyone knows a quicker way, please e-mail me.
Now that you can write to your black text layer, select the entire layer for drawing. Go to the Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur tool in the top menu. YouÆll notice that your shadow looks smooth now. Play with the scroll bar until you get the level of blurring that you like.
Of course, the shadow trick is not completely restricted to text. If you like, you can do the same thing to selections of any shape. All you have to do is make a new layer and fill the selection in with black.
