Photoshop: Cast shadow

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Here's the most basic shadow in Photoshop, requiring nothing more than applying a layer style.

1. Create a new document.
2. Choose the text tool and type something.
3. Go to Layers --> Layer Style --> Drop shadow.
4. Under structure, adjust the various options until your shadow looks correct.  A nice feature here is the ability to drag the shadow around within your document using the move tool.  While the shadow dialog box is open, you can drag the shadow where you want it.

That was easy.  What if you want a little shadow at the base of your image, to give a different 3-D, or cast style to it?

"Squashed" (cast) shadow at the base of an element

1. Follow steps one and two above.  Once you have some text, or alternately, some solid shape in your image:
2. Control + Click on the little T of your new layer in the layers palette (or image thumbnail, if you're not using text). This makes a selection of your text or chosen shape.
   
3. Make a new layer.
4. In the select menu, choose modify, feather, and enter 3 pixels.  You may want to vary this number depending on the size of your selection.  The larger the selection, the higher the number should be.
5. Make black your foreground color and choose Edit --> Fill (with foreground color).
   
6. Turn off your selection (Control + D).
7. Decrease the opacity of this layer until it's a nice faded gray.
8. Use Control + T to transform.  Squash the layer down to about 1/5th its size.
   
9. Position the shadow layer behind your original text or image.
   
10. You now have a nice squashed shadow at the base. You can play around with this by applying Control + T again on the shadow, and then right click to get options like skew and distort.  Tweaking the shadow will make it appear to be cast from different locations.

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