Drop Shadow

The Drop Shadow live effect makes an object appear as though it was offset slightly from its background and casting a shadow from an imaginary light source. You can control the effect with six settings: Softness, Offset, Opacity, Shadow Color, Light Angle, and Noise.

• Softness  The Softness setting lets you control the blurriness of the shadow — similar to applying a Gaussian Blur to the shadow.
• Offset  This controls how far from the original object the shadow should be placed.
• Opacity  The Opacity controls the density and transparency of the shadow. A value of 1 is a solid shadow. A value of .5 equals 50% transparency.
• Shadow Color  You can change the color of the shadow in this area.
• Light Angle  The position of the shadow is determined by the Light Angle value. A value of zero places the shadow directly to the right of the object; a value of 180 places the shadow to the left. A value of 315 is a typical value, placing the shadow down and to the right of the object.
• Noise  Adding a small amount of Noise to your shadows makes them appear more natural. Usually a value around .05 is enough, but larger values can be useful for special effects.

Applying Drop Shadow to three objects: a bitmapped image, a rectangle with a gradient, and a text object.
The original objects (top); the objects with the live effect visible (bottom).

For more information about how to apply live effects, see Live effects.