You can find a wonderful article on realistic drop shadows on the Digital Scrapbook Place web site. To make a digital layout made in a computer have a realistic look it is important to read and understand the concept of applying drop shadows. This is a very quick tutorial to show you how to adjust drop shadows in Digital Image Pro. The screen shots are made in DIP 10.

Complete you layout. The example I have does not have any drop shadows applied to it yet. You will notice it has a slightly flat look. Although some of the elements I have made have a slight drop shadow already on them.

Click on the layer you will be applying the drop shadow to. I will first apply a slight drop shadow to the ribbon on the right side of my layout, I click on that layer in the stack, you will see it will turn a light blue color. .Then click on Effects > Shadow

Then select soft drop shadow right.

You will notice that a new drop shadow box appears on the ribbon. You can adjust this shadow by clicking on the and moving it. You can change the color, rotate it, to make it more realistic. Once you like the effect, click on done. Be careful, once you click on done, you cannot change it. (but you can always use the undo if you are not pleased with the result).

I will apply a shadow to the tag, select this tag from the stack. Follow the same instructions from above.

You can see the drop shadow is slightly to big for a realistic look. Grab the handles and drag a move the shadow to where you would like it.

You can see I have moved the shadow closer to the tag. Click on done when you are finished.

Add shadows to the rest of the layout and you are done.

Have fun and please post your layouts in the Digital Scrapbook Place Gallery.

Click here for a printable copy.