How to Create Shadows from Scratch in Photoshop

[Music] hi there this is from pixel perfect how are you doing i hope you're having a fantastic day and making it a brilliant one today i'm going to share with you an easy trick to create shadows from scratch in photoshop now take a look at this photo it is not possible that we always have the luxury of having the shadow on a plain background or ground so that we can easily extract it by the way if you do have the luxury to do that watch this video it is much easier that way but in most cases we do have something like this the ground is not very plain it has so many ups and downs so many texture in these cases it is absolutely impossible to extract the shadow it is much easier indeed to create the shadow from scratch now to create a more realistic shadow we need to first understand how these shadows are created now when you look at this photo think of the shadow as layers so you can consider this entire area i'm gonna mark it for you as layer one right i'm gonna quickly do it this is layer one first layer of shadow now when you look at it closely there are areas which are darker than that and why are they darker they are darker because less light is going into those places and those are these areas look at this see so you can consider this as layer 2. now there are areas which are way more darker and those are these areas right you can see some areas like this right over there and this is layer 3 and the layer 4 right here look at it closely just under it as a very thin line where no light is going through that my friend is layer four i cannot even mark it but you get the point this my friend is layer four if you think of shadows this way it is very easy to fill it brush it trust me it is way easier than you think and we're gonna do it together don't worry so without any further ado let's get started back at the magical world of photoshop and as usual if you want to go ahead and download this photo and follow along you can always go ahead and check the links in the description now this is important for let's say your product photographer and if you want it on a solid background or if there's any item that you want to create a shadow off this is a crucial lesson so let's go ahead and get started the very first thing we need to do is to make the selection of the product right here so we have a couple of bar of soap so now you can take the time to use the selection method of your choice you can use the object selection tool and if you do that if you do make a selection like that and it does a fantastic selection now to save time i already have made the selection now keep in mind i did make the selection using the pen tool because that my friend is the most accurate way to do it especially when it comes to products so to load the selection we're going to go to select load selection and i saved it as soap hit ok the selection is loaded by the way i'm just going to give you the starting psd with the selection in build so check the link in the description to download that you don't have to make the selection with the selection active click on the mask button now it's separated now let's name this soap all right first of all let's create a white background you can also extend the canvas if you like because at times we might want to position it in such a way that we don't want any edges around the edge so press c for the crop tool and extend it a little too much so that we have space for enough shadows all right this will give us a lot of flexibility now let's create a white background by clicking on the adjustment layer icon and then choose solid color and choose white and place it under the so let's start with creating the shadows now to create the shadows we can take the assistance of the existing shadow as guidelines by the way i turned off the mask by holding the shift key and clicked on the mask button now let's create a layer on top of color fill and this is our layer 1 of shadow let's keep it at layer 1 and let's name this shadow now you can outline the shadow using the pen tool the lasso tool whatever you wish but in this case since most of the shadow is straight to save time we're just going to use the polygonal lasso tool all right so let's start from right here and go till here i'm just extending shadow way too much it won't be that much but just to be on the safer side right this seems about right and let's finish it off right here once you're happy with the selection fill it with black for the foreground color black if it's not already black you can always press d to set the foreground and the background color to default so with the foreground color black press alt backspace option delete on a mac and now you can turn on the mask if you wish now i know it looks crap just wait for it by the way if you look at the original shadow notice one thing closely look at the shadow near to the object it is less blurrier than the one which is further away right the shadow gets more and more blurrier as it goes further and further away from the object so we have to mimic that in the shadow we created as well so hold the shift key click on the mask to turn it back on and then with this layer selected go to filter convert for smart filters hit okay why did we do that so that whatever filter we apply we'll be able to change the values later in this case it would be blur let's go to filter blur gallery and then field blur why field blur because it gives us multiple points to adjust different blurs in different areas so right in here we want a little bit of blur and right in here we want a lot of blur so let's increase the blur a lot like this right in here as well we want a lot of blur and right in here very less blur now there are two ways to adjust the blur right here one is the smart way one is the technical way the technical way is clicking on these points then individually working the slider smart way is just move the points a little away to control how these shadows are blurred that's all so i'm gonna move this point further away just like this have a look we are getting that nice gradient let's zoom out a bit i like this gradient i'm going to increase the blur a little more there you go let's move it a little further away let's move it right here there you go hit okay once you're satisfied and that looks pretty good now keep in mind you can change the values anytime you wish why because this my friend is a smart object now of course this is too much let's go ahead and decrease the opacity let's keep it at 40 for now again we can change this later now let's create a mask click on the mask button right there and i would prefer why not create a negative mask hold the alt key of the option key and click on the mask button to create a negative mask then take the brush take a soft round brush and make the brush really really large like this with white as the foreground color just start bringing in the shadows see that so this my friend was our first layer of shadow now if it doesn't look right don't worry we can always adjust it later let's focus on the second layer it is just like giving final exams in school once you're done with the first test please do not worry too much about it move on to the second test and after all the tests are done then you can always re-evaluate because that way you will just destroy the results of the subsequent tests that's what my father told me anyway let's go ahead and create a brand new layer this is layer number two and this is also for the shadow all right let's go back to the polygonal lasso two and now let's draw in the second layer by the way if you accidentally made a point press backspace that point will go away have a look see those points are going away so that's a good tip right there let's add a little too much here as well that's something we are doing on purpose okay fill it as well with black all packs please option delete press control or command d similarly let's go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok and then filter blur gallery field blur now in this case you can also choose to do the same thing here a little bit of blur but that will be a little more than previous and here a lot of blur loads of blur there you go similarly right here as well less blur here loads of blur i feel that display also needs to increase that looks about right hit okay now on top of that you can also add a little more gaussian blur to soften everything up a little bit let's go to filter blur and then gaussian blur 100 is fine hit okay there you go now let's go ahead and decrease the opacity slowly and gradually increase it this one is also good at 36 i think this area would need a little more blur so we can add a blur on top of that no issues go to filter blur gallery and tilt shift this time and let's have the blur start from right here from the solid line and end at the dotted line right over here let's rotate it a little bit just like this and then let's go ahead and increase the blur all right that seems about right hit okay now let's worry about layer number three so let's collapse it it's becoming too busy let's create a new layer and this my friend is layer three for the shadow with the help of the polygonal lasso two let's do the honors let's fill it control our command d and now let's do the honors of blurring it by going to filter don't forget convert for smart filters hit okay and then go to filter blur you can apply gaussian blur right now it doesn't really matter much blur and then gaussian blur i think about 140 is nice now of course decrease the opacity slowly and gradually increase it i would go back to gaussian blur and increase it further 180 and let's decrease the opacity slightly to about 60. now let's do the final layer that is layer number four layer four for the win polygonal lasso tool selected and then let's start from right here and we can actually make an outline here since it will be very close an outline is enough let's fill it alt backspace option delete you can barely see it but we have to blur it a little by going to filter convert for smart filters hit ok and then filter gaussian blur very slight blur not that much now let's blur slowly and gradually something about 19.4 feels great hit ok decrease the opacity of course and slowly and gradually increase it to a point where it looks ok and now you can work on the opacity of the rest of the shadows just by working up the opacity it makes so much of a difference now at this point i would highly recommend that you go ahead and take a break and then get back to it go for a walk go drink coffee tea whatever you like water speak to your family and then when you get back to it you might see something that you might have missed because you were so engrossed in the work so now when i look at it this area looks a little too weird we need to fix that this area as well too weird so how do we fix it that area needed to be a little more sharper so we're gonna go to layer one to the mask of layer one take the brush take a soft round brush make it a little bit smaller and now just take it away take the extra away so we're just gonna dab right here make sure the flow and opacity both are at 100 just dab with black as the foreground color hold the shift key and dab right in here that is taken care of now let's do it at a better angle dab right here i think this would be a better angle maybe that way anyway decrease the flow 20 and slowly and gradually let's fix the angle here there we go that is fixed similarly right here as well dab hold the shift key just there now i know it creates a two shadow effect which makes it look even more realistic because if you have a look at the original one you would notice right here that there are two layers right and if you do want to paint a little more manually you're welcome to do so but in ecommerce websites trust me this is enough but i know if you do want to paint you can just go ahead and create a brand new layer this is just for brushing take the brush black as the foreground color and then just start brushing a little bit here if you wish there you go adds a little more to it so that's up to you as much as you want to do now sometimes when we do create shadows from scratch it makes sense to also darken the areas of the object which are closer to the shadow so let's create a layer on top of the soap and let's limit it just to the soap so that whatever we do will be limited to the soap all right so to limit it hold the alt the option key and click on the line between these two lists of course let's go ahead and erase that controller command a and delete i can darken a little bit of the object as well now it was already dark so you don't have to do it much but in some cases you might have to do it that's why i'm showing it to you now you can go back to the brush layer regular brushing zoom in right here and create the extreme dark shadows see now it's looking really realistic so you can easily do it by dabbing once right here hold the shift key and then continue continue through the unevenness of it you can think of this shadow as the fifth layer but this is the shadow that just connects it to the floor or the ground it will be more in these creases here and there it doesn't have to be in all of the places i can of course control the opacity of it and there you go my friend that's how to create shadows in photoshop by the way if you want to make it a little more fancy there's a way to do it so select all the shadows this was the brushing and hold the shift key select the last shadow right here press ctrl or command g now on top of this shadow group let's name this shadow press ctrl shift n command shift n new layer dialog box will show up change the mode to overlay check fill with overlay neutral color some of you already know what we are doing we are adding a little bit of noise to make the ground a little more natural let's go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok now let's go to filter noise and add noise 30 is fine uniform monochromatic hit okay just by doing that have a look so much more natural it looks now the noise is very very sharp computeristic so we need to blur it a little bit let's do it by going to filter blur and then gaussian blur 0.8 or 7 or 6 is fine let's go with 0.8 and then you can always decrease the opacity of it let's keep it 44 and just by adding that it adds so much so here's without the grain not looking as good here's off to the green looks like a nice 3d render doesn't it so that my friend is an easy way to create shadows from scratch in photoshop now if you want to make it even more realistic and natural you can always take the brush and paint in a little bit more but this is more than enough if you're doing product photography and putting your product on ecommerce websites this is all you need i hope this video helped you let's do a quick little recap think of shadows as layers so you can think of it in terms of as many layer as you like if you look at the original shadow right here have a look there's this big area which you can consider as layer one there's the smaller area which is a little more dark because lesser light reaches there and then there's this area which is very close to it it is darker and then there is this area which is absolutely under it where no light is reaching it's the absolute darkest place so consider those layers and create shadows in those layers and you would be fine you know what now when i look at it i think that the darkening on top of the object was not a good idea in this case so let's turn it off and see how that helps all right that is in fact better anyway i hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other feature tips tricks or tutorials i would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting pixem perfect on patreon and helping keep mixing perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching i'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] true [Music]

[Music] hi there this is from pixel perfect how are you doing i hope you&#39;re having a fantastic day and making it a brilliant one today i&#39;m going to share with you an easy trick to create shadows from scratch in photoshop now take a look at this photo it is not possible that we always have the luxury of having the shadow on a plain background or ground so that we can easily extract it by the way if you do have the luxury to do that watch this video it is much easier that way but in most cases we do have something like this the ground is not very plain it has so many ups and downs so many texture in these cases it is absolutely impossible to extract the shadow it is much easier indeed to create the shadow from scratch now to create a more realistic shadow we need to first understand how these shadows are created now when you look at this photo think of the shadow as layers so you can consider this entire area i&#39;m gonna mark it for you as layer one right i&#39;m gonna quickly do it this is layer one first layer of shadow now when you look at it closely there are areas which are darker than that and why are they darker they are darker because less light is going into those places and those are these areas look at this see so you can consider this as layer 2. now there are areas which are way more darker and those are these areas right you can see some areas like this right over there and this is layer 3 and the layer 4 right here look at it closely just under it as a very thin line where no light is going through that my friend is layer four i cannot even mark it but you get the point this my friend is layer four if you think of shadows this way it is very easy to fill it brush it trust me it is way easier than you think and we&#39;re gonna do it together don&#39;t worry so without any further ado let&#39;s get started back at the magical world of photoshop and as usual if you want to go ahead and download this photo and follow along you can always go ahead and check the links in the description now this is important for let&#39;s say your product photographer and if you want it on a solid background or if there&#39;s any item that you want to create a shadow off this is a crucial lesson so let&#39;s go ahead and get started the very first thing we need to do is to make the selection of the product right here so we have a couple of bar of soap so now you can take the time to use the selection method of your choice you can use the object selection tool and if you do that if you do make a selection like that and it does a fantastic selection now to save time i already have made the selection now keep in mind i did make the selection using the pen tool because that my friend is the most accurate way to do it especially when it comes to products so to load the selection we&#39;re going to go to select load selection and i saved it as soap hit ok the selection is loaded by the way i&#39;m just going to give you the starting psd with the selection in build so check the link in the description to download that you don&#39;t have to make the selection with the selection active click on the mask button now it&#39;s separated now let&#39;s name this soap all right first of all let&#39;s create a white background you can also extend the canvas if you like because at times we might want to position it in such a way that we don&#39;t want any edges around the edge so press c for the crop tool and extend it a little too much so that we have space for enough shadows all right this will give us a lot of flexibility now let&#39;s create a white background by clicking on the adjustment layer icon and then choose solid color and choose white and place it under the so let&#39;s start with creating the shadows now to create the shadows we can take the assistance of the existing shadow as guidelines by the way i turned off the mask by holding the shift key and clicked on the mask button now let&#39;s create a layer on top of color fill and this is our layer 1 of shadow let&#39;s keep it at layer 1 and let&#39;s name this shadow now you can outline the shadow using the pen tool the lasso tool whatever you wish but in this case since most of the shadow is straight to save time we&#39;re just going to use the polygonal lasso tool all right so let&#39;s start from right here and go till here i&#39;m just extending shadow way too much it won&#39;t be that much but just to be on the safer side right this seems about right and let&#39;s finish it off right here once you&#39;re happy with the selection fill it with black for the foreground color black if it&#39;s not already black you can always press d to set the foreground and the background color to default so with the foreground color black press alt backspace option delete on a mac and now you can turn on the mask if you wish now i know it looks crap just wait for it by the way if you look at the original shadow notice one thing closely look at the shadow near to the object it is less blurrier than the one which is further away right the shadow gets more and more blurrier as it goes further and further away from the object so we have to mimic that in the shadow we created as well so hold the shift key click on the mask to turn it back on and then with this layer selected go to filter convert for smart filters hit okay why did we do that so that whatever filter we apply we&#39;ll be able to change the values later in this case it would be blur let&#39;s go to filter blur gallery and then field blur why field blur because it gives us multiple points to adjust different blurs in different areas so right in here we want a little bit of blur and right in here we want a lot of blur so let&#39;s increase the blur a lot like this right in here as well we want a lot of blur and right in here very less blur now there are two ways to adjust the blur right here one is the smart way one is the technical way the technical way is clicking on these points then individually working the slider smart way is just move the points a little away to control how these shadows are blurred that&#39;s all so i&#39;m gonna move this point further away just like this have a look we are getting that nice gradient let&#39;s zoom out a bit i like this gradient i&#39;m going to increase the blur a little more there you go let&#39;s move it a little further away let&#39;s move it right here there you go hit okay once you&#39;re satisfied and that looks pretty good now keep in mind you can change the values anytime you wish why because this my friend is a smart object now of course this is too much let&#39;s go ahead and decrease the opacity let&#39;s keep it at 40 for now again we can change this later now let&#39;s create a mask click on the mask button right there and i would prefer why not create a negative mask hold the alt key of the option key and click on the mask button to create a negative mask then take the brush take a soft round brush and make the brush really really large like this with white as the foreground color just start bringing in the shadows see that so this my friend was our first layer of shadow now if it doesn&#39;t look right don&#39;t worry we can always adjust it later let&#39;s focus on the second layer it is just like giving final exams in school once you&#39;re done with the first test please do not worry too much about it move on to the second test and after all the tests are done then you can always re-evaluate because that way you will just destroy the results of the subsequent tests that&#39;s what my father told me anyway let&#39;s go ahead and create a brand new layer this is layer number two and this is also for the shadow all right let&#39;s go back to the polygonal lasso two and now let&#39;s draw in the second layer by the way if you accidentally made a point press backspace that point will go away have a look see those points are going away so that&#39;s a good tip right there let&#39;s add a little too much here as well that&#39;s something we are doing on purpose okay fill it as well with black all packs please option delete press control or command d similarly let&#39;s go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok and then filter blur gallery field blur now in this case you can also choose to do the same thing here a little bit of blur but that will be a little more than previous and here a lot of blur loads of blur there you go similarly right here as well less blur here loads of blur i feel that display also needs to increase that looks about right hit okay now on top of that you can also add a little more gaussian blur to soften everything up a little bit let&#39;s go to filter blur and then gaussian blur 100 is fine hit okay there you go now let&#39;s go ahead and decrease the opacity slowly and gradually increase it this one is also good at 36 i think this area would need a little more blur so we can add a blur on top of that no issues go to filter blur gallery and tilt shift this time and let&#39;s have the blur start from right here from the solid line and end at the dotted line right over here let&#39;s rotate it a little bit just like this and then let&#39;s go ahead and increase the blur all right that seems about right hit okay now let&#39;s worry about layer number three so let&#39;s collapse it it&#39;s becoming too busy let&#39;s create a new layer and this my friend is layer three for the shadow with the help of the polygonal lasso two let&#39;s do the honors let&#39;s fill it control our command d and now let&#39;s do the honors of blurring it by going to filter don&#39;t forget convert for smart filters hit okay and then go to filter blur you can apply gaussian blur right now it doesn&#39;t really matter much blur and then gaussian blur i think about 140 is nice now of course decrease the opacity slowly and gradually increase it i would go back to gaussian blur and increase it further 180 and let&#39;s decrease the opacity slightly to about 60. now let&#39;s do the final layer that is layer number four layer four for the win polygonal lasso tool selected and then let&#39;s start from right here and we can actually make an outline here since it will be very close an outline is enough let&#39;s fill it alt backspace option delete you can barely see it but we have to blur it a little by going to filter convert for smart filters hit ok and then filter gaussian blur very slight blur not that much now let&#39;s blur slowly and gradually something about 19.4 feels great hit ok decrease the opacity of course and slowly and gradually increase it to a point where it looks ok and now you can work on the opacity of the rest of the shadows just by working up the opacity it makes so much of a difference now at this point i would highly recommend that you go ahead and take a break and then get back to it go for a walk go drink coffee tea whatever you like water speak to your family and then when you get back to it you might see something that you might have missed because you were so engrossed in the work so now when i look at it this area looks a little too weird we need to fix that this area as well too weird so how do we fix it that area needed to be a little more sharper so we&#39;re gonna go to layer one to the mask of layer one take the brush take a soft round brush make it a little bit smaller and now just take it away take the extra away so we&#39;re just gonna dab right here make sure the flow and opacity both are at 100 just dab with black as the foreground color hold the shift key and dab right in here that is taken care of now let&#39;s do it at a better angle dab right here i think this would be a better angle maybe that way anyway decrease the flow 20 and slowly and gradually let&#39;s fix the angle here there we go that is fixed similarly right here as well dab hold the shift key just there now i know it creates a two shadow effect which makes it look even more realistic because if you have a look at the original one you would notice right here that there are two layers right and if you do want to paint a little more manually you&#39;re welcome to do so but in ecommerce websites trust me this is enough but i know if you do want to paint you can just go ahead and create a brand new layer this is just for brushing take the brush black as the foreground color and then just start brushing a little bit here if you wish there you go adds a little more to it so that&#39;s up to you as much as you want to do now sometimes when we do create shadows from scratch it makes sense to also darken the areas of the object which are closer to the shadow so let&#39;s create a layer on top of the soap and let&#39;s limit it just to the soap so that whatever we do will be limited to the soap all right so to limit it hold the alt the option key and click on the line between these two lists of course let&#39;s go ahead and erase that controller command a and delete i can darken a little bit of the object as well now it was already dark so you don&#39;t have to do it much but in some cases you might have to do it that&#39;s why i&#39;m showing it to you now you can go back to the brush layer regular brushing zoom in right here and create the extreme dark shadows see now it&#39;s looking really realistic so you can easily do it by dabbing once right here hold the shift key and then continue continue through the unevenness of it you can think of this shadow as the fifth layer but this is the shadow that just connects it to the floor or the ground it will be more in these creases here and there it doesn&#39;t have to be in all of the places i can of course control the opacity of it and there you go my friend that&#39;s how to create shadows in photoshop by the way if you want to make it a little more fancy there&#39;s a way to do it so select all the shadows this was the brushing and hold the shift key select the last shadow right here press ctrl or command g now on top of this shadow group let&#39;s name this shadow press ctrl shift n command shift n new layer dialog box will show up change the mode to overlay check fill with overlay neutral color some of you already know what we are doing we are adding a little bit of noise to make the ground a little more natural let&#39;s go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok now let&#39;s go to filter noise and add noise 30 is fine uniform monochromatic hit okay just by doing that have a look so much more natural it looks now the noise is very very sharp computeristic so we need to blur it a little bit let&#39;s do it by going to filter blur and then gaussian blur 0.8 or 7 or 6 is fine let&#39;s go with 0.8 and then you can always decrease the opacity of it let&#39;s keep it 44 and just by adding that it adds so much so here&#39;s without the grain not looking as good here&#39;s off to the green looks like a nice 3d render doesn&#39;t it so that my friend is an easy way to create shadows from scratch in photoshop now if you want to make it even more realistic and natural you can always take the brush and paint in a little bit more but this is more than enough if you&#39;re doing product photography and putting your product on ecommerce websites this is all you need i hope this video helped you let&#39;s do a quick little recap think of shadows as layers so you can think of it in terms of as many layer as you like if you look at the original shadow right here have a look there&#39;s this big area which you can consider as layer one there&#39;s the smaller area which is a little more dark because lesser light reaches there and then there&#39;s this area which is very close to it it is darker and then there is this area which is absolutely under it where no light is reaching it&#39;s the absolute darkest place so consider those layers and create shadows in those layers and you would be fine you know what now when i look at it i think that the darkening on top of the object was not a good idea in this case so let&#39;s turn it off and see how that helps all right that is in fact better anyway i hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don&#39;t forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don&#39;t miss any other feature tips tricks or tutorials i would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting pixem perfect on patreon and helping keep mixing perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching i&#39;ll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] true [Music]

Transcript for:How to Create Shadows from Scratch in Photoshop

Transcript for:
How to Create Shadows from Scratch in Photoshop