When you have a see through element such as an organza ribbon or vellum tag, adding a drop shadow will cause the element to appear grey because the see-through element allows you to see the drop shadow underneath the entire element. There is a way around this however and it’s a pretty simple trick. Here’s how to create a drop shadow without having your element look grey or muddy.

Here is a see-through Vellum tag:

Here is the same tag with a plain drop shadow added. See how the vellum has turned grey? This may be ok in some instances, but there is a Photoshop trick that enables you to remove the drop shadow beneath the element, leaving the shadow only outside the edge.

After adding a drop shadow to your element, In your layers palette, click on the little grey arrow to see the drop shadow layer. Right-click (control-click on the Mac) the drop shadow layer and choose “create layer.” This will put the drop shadow on it’s own individual layer.

Next, select the newly created drop shadow layer in the layers palette, then Control-click (command-click on the Mac) the main element layer to select the element, creating the moving marquee around the element. Make sure the drop shadow layer is highlighted in the layers palatte and “delete.” You have just deleted the shadow image directly beneath the element, but the shadow around the outside edge has stayed in tack!

Now in the layers palatte, select the upper black arrow in the upper right corner of the palatte and select “merge visible”. This will merge your element with the shadow again and your done! Your element now has a nice shadow without that muddy grey look.

Click here for a printable copy of this tutorial.