Chapter 18
Dropping Shadows

Featuring

If we had to pick one aspect of computer-based drawing that has progressed the most in the last two years, it would have to be the drop shadow. We remember the bad old days all too well, when creating soft shadows behind objects never looked quite right. Of course, it’s still easy to mess up drop shadows, or use them in the wrong situations, and we will not let that subject go undiscussed in this chapter. But when you need a clean, soft drop shadow, the interactive tool introduced in DRAW 8 is without peer.

Hard vs. Soft

Let’s start by defining a few terms, because there are lots of ways to create shadows in DRAW and in the real world. Figure 18.1 shows a simple drop shadow being applied to a headline for an article about timesharing. This is a very common technique, easily created:

1.  Create the headline and shade it as desired.

2.  With it still selected, press the plus key to make a copy right on top of itself.

3.  Press Tab to switch to the original headline in the back.

4.  Fill it black.

5.  Use your keyboard arrow keys to nudge down and to the side.

FIGURE 18.1  Creating a hard drop shadow is easy with a bit of clever keystroking.

Is this really the way that a shadow would be cast if the lettering were raised and light were shone on it? Probably not, and some in the CorelDRAW community would scoff at the use of a so-called “hard shadow.” We wouldn’t. We view it as a perfectly credible technique to create a clean and unpretentious graphic effect. By using this, you’re not trying to fool anyone into seeing the headline floating above the page. You’re not trying to create a realistic shadow. You are simply using an age-old, but still effective, technique of calling a bit more attention to a headline. It is also a very good way to ensure contrast if you are not certain about the color qualities of the background. With light text and a dark drop shadow, one of the two will definitely show up against a medium-colored background.

We think this is perfectly fine; tell the purists to go jump in the lake.

However, we’re not so satisfied with Figure 18.2. By moving the headline into the photo, we are implicitly hovering it over the image of the lake (Lake Shasta in California, for anyone who cares), and now the shadow does not pass muster. If we are trying to create the effect of a raised headline, then the shadow cast by the letters would not be a hard shadow, but a soft one. It would show dispersion of light and areas of transparency. It would have to be a real shadow.

FIGURE 18.2  The effect of placing letters atop a photo requires a more realistic shadow than the simple hard drop shadow.

Shadows and Vectors Don’t Mix

Trying to create realistic shadows in DRAW has been an unhappy experience for many. Smart DRAW users prior to version 7 would send this image and its lettering into PHOTO-PAINT for a “real” shadow. DRAW versions 6 and below had no such capability, and DRAW 7 offered it only as an undocumented and intricate bitmap effect.

So DRAW users resorted to trickery with Blend and Contour, but the results were usually unacceptable. Figure 18.3 shows our best effort to create a soft shadow behind the headline, using Contour. The results aren’t too bad on the bottom of the third line of type, but above that, where the sky is darker, the lighter shade is too light. Were we to compensate up top, the lower part would be off. Were we to try to create a gradient contour, we would have to separate each line of type; it would be very time-consuming, and we would probably give up and redesign the piece.

FIGURE 18.3  Not good enough! Using vector-based tools to create soft shadows delivers unsatisfactory results.

This is clearly outside of the domain of vector tools, even with DRAW’s recent capability of applying transparency to objects. Vector objects are sharp, clean, and well-defined—that is their undying virtue. But shadows are supposed to be fuzzy, dull, and somewhat undefined. Therein lies the dilemma.

Shadows and Bitmaps Are Made for Each Other

A realistic soft shadow has bitmap written all over it. Pixels must fade to the colors underneath, and the transition needs to be gradual and somewhat diffuse. Vector objects are simply not capable of such effects without undo toil on your part.

As a result, one of the truly cool discoveries back in DRAW 7 was learning we could convert an object to a bitmap and apply a blur to it. It was a bit unwieldy and had its share of bugs, but we made it work. This was the beginning of a new era for DRAW.

Enter the Interactive Drop Shadow

With DRAW 8, soft shadowing hit its stride. Corel introduced its arsenal of interactive tools, including the Interactive Drop Shadow tool. This now stands as the recognized method for creating soft shadows.

Watch how easily and how credibly we can create a soft shadow to the headline above the photo. To follow along, import any photo into DRAW and type a string of artistic text on top of it. Try to find a photo that has a varying background, like the sky in our photo. Then do this:

1.  Select the text.

2.  Activate the Interactive Drop Shadow tool (the last icon on the Interactive Tool flyout on the toolbox).

3.  Place your cursor inside the lettering and drag out in whatever direction you want to cast the shadow. DRAW creates an outline to show you where the shadow will go when you release the mouse.

4.  Release the mouse.

Now DRAW will think for a while. Internally, it is creating a copy of the text, converting it to a bitmap, and applying a transparent blur to the bitmap. With a simple rectangle, this won’t take more than five seconds, but for a three-deck headline, you might be watching it churn away for 30 seconds or more. The result is worth it, though.

While we’re not done with this shadow, notice that it already is satisfying the crucial requirements of a realistic shadow:

•  It goes from more opaque directly below the letters to more transparent away from the letters.

•  Its transparency is true, irrespective of the color beneath it.

To illustrate this last point, we drew an object, filled it with a totally incongruous color, and placed it behind the headline. As shown on the facing page, the drawing suffers from having a bright yellow ellipse with a red outline in it, but the shadowing remains credible.

Behind the sky, the shadowing is a light blue; behind the ellipse, the shadowing is light yellow. Try doing that with Contour.