KPT ShadowLand
The ShadowLand extension provides you with an environment within which to easily create soft shadow, halo shadow, and zoom shadow effects. Shadow effects are generated by creating successive duplicates of your artwork, and altering their size, rotation, offset, or colors according to your specifications. 

As you pass your cursor over the preview window, it will change to a crosshair, indicating that direct interaction is available. Pressing and dragging in the preview window enables you to control the Angle and (offset) Distance of the shadow simultaneously. These two effect components are also available discretely via slider controls.

For quicker interaction, shadow effects are displayed as grayscale rectangles in the Preview window while changes are being made, and are then replaced with actual object shadows.

Options Menu
As with all of the KPT Vector Effects extensions, the first of the four “umbrella” buttons above the ShadowLand preview window contains a pop-up Options menu.

Pressing on this symbol will give you access to the following options for the ShadowLand extension, each of which is discussed in detail below.

Help, Reset, and Preferences
The Help, Reset, and Preferences commands in the KPT ShadowLand Options menu are identical to the same commands in the Options menus of all of the other extensions. For a detailed discussion of these commands, please see the Options Menu section of the User Interface discussion.

Connect Steps
As we noted above, Shadow effects are generated in part by creating successive duplicates of your artwork; this can result in a “stairstepping” effect between the resulting duplicates. In many cases, this is a desirable effect. When you want a smoother shadow effect, select the Connect Steps option to create additional artwork that will connect the “stairsteps” of your shadows, creating a much smoother Zoom shadow effect. The Connect Steps effect is not displayed in the preview window; it is only visible after the effect is applied to your artwork.

Because of the objects added to your artwork to create the smoothing, this option will add significantly to the size of your file and to the amount of available memory needed by the host application.

Use “To…” Color As Background
In a PostScript environment, there is currently no way to create true transparency. One effective way to create the illusion of transparency is to blend your object into your background. Shadow effects in particular can benefit a great deal from this technique. In most cases, you will be creating shadows against a white background... that is why the default value for the “To...” color (see “From…” and “To…” Color discussions, below) is white. However, there will be times when you want to create a shadow effect that will blend into a background of another color. Selecting the Use “To…” Color As Background option allows you to quickly explore the possibilities of different background colors into which your shadow can blend, eliminating the need to exit the extension, change the background color in your artwork, re-enter the extension, and so on. With this option selected, simply changing the “To…” color will automatically update the background color.

Edit Colors…
Selecting this Option, or using the keyboard shortcut Command-L, presents you with a precise way of selecting the From and To colors for the shadow effect. Upon selecting this command, the right-hand side of the extension UI will be replaced with two sets of CMYK sliders. The first set of sliders (on the left) determines the From color, and the second set of sliders determines the To color.

“From” determines the color of the shadow where it begins closest to the object, and the “To” color determines the color of the shadow where it ends, furthest from the object,

You can click or press and drag on any color slider to set that value, or you can enter the desired values directly into the numeric entry fields. You can Tab or Shift-Tab through the fields.

There is a pop-up menu above the slider area that gives you a choice between Process color and Object color. With Process selected, you have four sliders and four numerical entry fields available for mixing C, M, Y, and K values. With Object color selected, you will have one slider and one numerical entry field available. 

You can see your new colors previewed against your old colors in the color swatches on the “From…” and “To…” buttons.

All values are expressed as a percentage of tint range, from 0 to 100%. The default settings are 50% of object color for “From” and 0% of object color for “To.”
To exit the slider “room” without making any changes, hit the Escape key or click on the Cancel button. 

To exit and accept your changes, hit the Enter or Return key, or click on the OK button. 

Shadow Modes
You may apply only one shadow effect at a time on selected artwork, therefore only one of the three shadow modes (Zoom Shadow, Soft Shadow, or Hard Shadow) can be selected at any time. A blue checkmark will appear next to the active shadow mode. You are, of course, free to experiment and switch modes any time you like while in the ShadowLand extension.

Zoom Shadow/Zoom Rotation
Zoom shadows are soft or hard “stepped” shadows that can also be rotated, creating the Zoom effect. The Zoom Rotation slider determines the angle of rotation; other controls that affect the Zoom Shadow can be found under “General Controls.”

Zoom Rotation values are expressed in degrees, ranging from -360 to +360. The default value is 0.

Soft Shadow/Softness
Soft Shadow creates a soft, subtle shadow which can appear almost as soft as a Gaussian blurred shadow. (A Gaussian blur is a commonly-seen effect in the bitmapped world, and can be used to create attractive soft drop shadows.) There are two main components to the Soft Shadow effect: Softness and Steps, both of which are discussed below, under General Controls.

The Softness slider determines the width of the transition area from the beginning to the end of the shadow effect. It is within this determined range that the quantity of transition Steps set with the Steps control will occur. The Softness value is expressed in points, ranging from 0 to 20, though you may manually enter any positive value beyond the slider’s range for greater softening. The default value is 0.

Halo Shadow/Halosity
The Halo Shadow type generates a variant of the Soft Shadow: where the Soft Shadow works within the aspect ratio of your selected artwork, the Halo Shadow begins its transition at the boundaries of your selected artwork and softens gradually as it goes outward. The result is a puffy, tubularesque halo effect, especially where there is no Distance value (see the discussion of the Distance slider below, in General Controls). There are two main components to the Halo Shadow effect: Halosity and Steps, both of which are discussed in the General Controls.

The Halosity slider determines the width of the transition area from the beginning to the end of the shadow effect. It is within this determined range that the quantity of transition Steps set with the Steps control will occur. The Halosity value is expressed in points, ranging from 0 to 40, though you may manually enter any positive value beyond the slider’s range, for greater softening. The default value is 0.

General Controls
The controls in this section of the user interface are available to all shadow modes.

Scale
Use this slider to resize the shadow effect. In the case of the Zoom Shadow, you are scaling the size of the final shadow component. Dragging this slider to the right increases the size of the shadow effect, while dragging it to the left decreases the size of the shadow effect.

Scale values are expressed as a percentage of object size, ranging from -100 to +200%. The default value is 0. 

Note: You may, as always, manually enter positive values beyond the slider ranges. In the case of the Zoom Shadow, some interesting effects can also be obtained by entering negative values.

Steps
The Steps slider specifies how many steps should occur in the shadow transition. The greater the number of steps, the smoother the effect will be, but the longer it will take for your computer to process the necessary information.

Step values are expressed as a quantity, ranging from 1 to 256. The default value is 16. 

Note: You can create simple hard shadows, regardless of the shadow mode you are in, simply by designating a Steps value of 1.
Note: Although you can manually enter values greater than 256, excessive stepping can cause problems with imagesetters. In most cases, moderate settings will suffice.

Distance
This slider determines the offset distance between the original artwork and the shadow . Dragging the slider to the right increases the distance, while dragging it to the left decreases the distance. You can also adjust the distance between the artwork and its shadow by pressing and dragging directly in the Preview window.

Distance values are expressed in points, ranging from 0 to 100. The default value is 0.

Angle
This slider determines the shadow’s offset angle in relation to the original artwork. Dragging the Angle slider to the right rotates the offset angle in a counter-clockwise direction, while dragging the slider to the left rotates the offset angle in a clockwise direction. [check this] You can also adjust the shadow angle by pressing and dragging directly in the Preview window.

Angle offset values are expressed in degrees, ranging from -360° to +360°. The slider will “loop” in either direction, allowing you to freely rotate through the full 360° range uninterrupted. The default value is 0°.

“From…” Color and “To…” Color
Shadows are created by generating duplicates of your artwork, performing various aesthetic operations on them, and transitioning from one color to another. The “From” and “To” color controls allow you to designate the colors for the transition.

The square swatches of color on the “From…” and “To…” buttons indicate that the buttons are in fact color controls. The color displayed by the swatch represents the currently chosen color for the “From…” or “To…” color. Clicking on either of these buttons causes a CMYK color picker to appear. The color picker consists of a grayscale ramp from which to choose gray values; a larger color area from which to choose CMYK colors; and a “radio dial” style area from which to select a percentage of the selected artwork’s extant color.

To select a color simply drag the eyedropper mouse cursor to the desired color and release the mouse button. Dragging the eyedropper cursor outside the color picker area will revert to your previously assigned color, should you change your mind in mid-drag! 

As you drag across the color picker, the color swatch on the button will split to display two different colors. The upper-left portion of the color swatch will display the new color (as determined by the tip of the eyedropper mouse cursor), while the lower-right portion will display the original color. You can see your new colors previewed against your old colors in the color swatches on the “From…” and “To…” buttons in real time as you drag. 

While the color picker is visible, if you hit the Tab key, you can Tab through the entry fields and manually enter C, M, Y, K, or Object Color percentage values. 

All values are expressed as a percentage of tint range, from 0 to 100%. All values are expressed as a percentage of tint range, from 0 to 100%. The default settings are 50% of object color for “From” and 0% of object color for “To.”

Keep in mind that this is not a selection of CMYK-legal RGB colors, but instead is a true, algorithmic CMYK picker; what you set is what you will get at output.

Notes:
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ShadowLand will create new (unfilled) artwork even if your selected artwork is neither filled nor stroked. In this case, the Color controls will have no effect.
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When Object color is selected, the color is derived from the process fill color (Zoom Shadow) or from the stroke color (Soft and Halo Shadows). 
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Shadows generated from objects that are filled with gradients or patterns will be created with gray levels.
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The resulting Shadow effect will be grouped separately from your original artwork, and will be placed behind it.
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While this extension creates lovely effects, be aware that the necessary computations can tax your processor considerably.  If you have a slower machine or are working with complex artwork, avoid using the realtime preview mode (make sure that Caps Lock is turned off). And if you use this extension on already complex artwork, make sure you have the RAM to handle it.