Associated Links

Shadows
Shadow: Affine
Color Well

Shadow: Specification


These parameters control the primary color and appearance of shadows. The check box near the top determines whether or not a graphic has a shadow. Shadow may be applied to graphics, text, contoured text and graphics with associated text.

For more some compositing effects such as highlighting the Image option is required, note the check box lower right. Without imaging the shadow will be a crisp copy of the parent graphic, it can still be shaped, distorted and softened.

The color of the shadow is controlled by the top Color Well and the percent setting. Percentage only applies when the shadow is being generated as an image - check box lower right. If imaging is not being used, transparency may still be achieved by applying an Opacity to the color using the normal Color Panel controls.

The effects parameters control the position and size of the shadow relative to the primary graphic. The location, or drop, of the shadow is specified in polar coordinates by the Drop value (length) and Angle (in degrees). The Bloom parameter allows the shadow to be made larger (or smaller using values less than 100%) than the parent graphic. One use of this parameter is to add a glow affect to a graphic.

The Image check box is used to generate the shadow by drawing the vector graphics first to a bit map image. Advanced compositioning effects such as highlighting are then available. All the other effects can be used without the intermediate image selection.

The Anti Aliasing check box can be used to turn off Anti-Aliasing when drawing the shadow. Anti-Aliasing is normally used by OS X's advanced Quartz rendering technology. It is key to the display crisp high quality graphics. In some cases when drawing the closely nested family of curves required to generate the shadow effects it may be desirable to turn off Anti-Aliasing.

The Edge parameter is used to soften, or blur the shadow. A 100% setting will generate a crisp edge to the shadow. Lesser settings will generate a fade region on the outer edge of the shadow. The shadow color will fade to transparent across the fade-edge parameter dimension.

Overlap controls the density of the shadow. In some cases applying a shadow to curved regions with sharp curvature gaps may appear in the generated shadow. Increasing the overlap can help reduce this affect. Light overlaps can be used to generate interesting blur effects.

Shadows can be expensive with respect to CPU time. EazyDraw uses advanced caching and anticipatory algorithms to minimize CPU load. Normally you will not notice performance degradation. But if shadows are combined with other CPU intensive effects such as contoured text (ie a advanced shadow applied to contoured text)) you may notice increased redraw times. In these cases you may want to prepare the shadow with the desired effects then turn it off with the top check box while working on other portions of the drawing. All the shadow settings are held with the parent graphic even though the shadow is not being drawn. Turn the shadow back on for final production or use the drawing. If the file is saved with the shaodow off, the information concerning the shawdow is not retained.