Hi Everyone! I’m Meredith and I’m one of the designers here at DHD! I have some new acrylic elements in the shop and thought I’d share with you a quick way to get a shadow on your acrylic element that doesn’t show through the transparent part. I used PSCS3 to do this tutorial – it includes using layer styles and masks. If you haven’t used either of these before, don’t be afraid! It’s super easy and I spent about two years working in Photoshop before getting up the courage to learn about masks. I don’t think I do a thing without them anymore, so give it a try! Okay, here we go!

First thing is first, get your files open that you will be using. For me, I used Melissa Esplin’s really awesome Psychadelic Circus Background and one of my frames from the Make Your Own Epoxy Frames set.

So once you have your layout all set up, make sure you have the acrylic shape layer selected and open the Layer Style tool to the drop shadow tool.  You can do this a couple of ways.  I usually just double click my thumbnail layer where it’s blank and the box will pop up.  You can also go to the bottom of your Layers palette and there is that little ‘fx’ symbol that you can click on and get to the layer style you want, in our case Drop Shadow.

Once you have your box up, set up the drop shadow as you like it.  I tend to a go a bit lighter on my shadows, so this is my set up for this particular frame. 50 Opacity, 3 px Distance, 13 px Size.

Once your shadow is all set up, click OK and you will see that little fx symbol will show up on that layer now, indicating that you have applied your layer style.  Our next step is to separate the layer style from the layer.  Again there are a couple of different ways to do this.  On your thumbnail layer in the layer palette, you can right click on the little fx symbol and the drop down menu will come up for you to choose ‘Create Layer’.

Another option is to go to your Layer menu at the top, go to Layer Style and choose ‘Create Layer’ there.

So once you have your Shadow Layer all set, select the layer tht is the frame layer in your layers palette.  Then go to your toolbox and grab the magic wand tool.  If you are using a frame like me, select both the inside and outside of the frame by holding down the Shift key while you select with your wand.

Once that is all selected and the ants are marching all around your acrylic object, select the Shadow Layer that you made before in your layer palette.  Here is the part where we add the mask.  At the bottom of your layer palette, there is a button right next to the fx button that is the quick mask button.  Click that button.

After you do, the shadow showing behind the acrylic piece will go and you will see the mask now added to your shadow layer.

Now you can add your staples and anything else you want on the layout and Voila!

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Tags: Acrylic Digital Elements, Drop Shadows, Meredith Fenwick, Photoshop