Clear cut but keep shadows?

NC
Posted By
Nik Coughlin
Apr 30, 2006
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763
Replies
3
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Closed
Say I have an object with a shadow on a white background, how can I clear cut it in such a way that I end up retaining the shadow and it having alpha transparency? Or is it easier to just add an artifical shadow in later? I’d prefer to keep the original object’s shadow if I can.
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K
KatWoman
May 1, 2006
"Nik Coughlin" wrote in message
Say I have an object with a shadow on a white background, how can I clear cut it in such a way that I end up retaining the shadow and it having alpha transparency? Or is it easier to just add an artifical shadow in later? I’d prefer to keep the original object’s shadow if I can.
set the fill of the layer to 0
T
Tacit
May 1, 2006
In article <e33e46$pqr$>,
"Nik Coughlin" wrote:

Say I have an object with a shadow on a white background, how can I clear cut it in such a way that I end up retaining the shadow and it having alpha transparency? Or is it easier to just add an artifical shadow in later? I’d prefer to keep the original object’s shadow if I can.

I have done this many times. I prefer to do it by making a copy of the layer, so that there are two layers. On the topmost layer, I create a layer mask that isolates the object alone, with no shadow. On the bottom layer, I create a layer mask that isolates just the shadow. I do this on two layers so that the topmost layer mask isolates the object with a hard edge, and on the bottom layer, I can set the layer mode to Multiply to make the shadow behave as it should.

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NC
Nik Coughlin
May 2, 2006
tacit wrote:
In article <e33e46$pqr$>,
"Nik Coughlin" wrote:

Say I have an object with a shadow on a white background, how can I clear cut it in such a way that I end up retaining the shadow and it having alpha transparency? Or is it easier to just add an artifical shadow in later? I’d prefer to keep the original object’s shadow if I can.

I have done this many times. I prefer to do it by making a copy of the layer, so that there are two layers. On the topmost layer, I create a layer mask that isolates the object alone, with no shadow. On the bottom layer, I create a layer mask that isolates just the shadow. I do this on two layers so that the topmost layer mask isolates the object with a hard edge, and on the bottom layer, I can set the layer mode to Multiply to make the shadow behave as it should.

Hi,

Thanks, I’ll give that a go too, always good to have a handful of tricks up one’s sleeve. I ended up doing something similar, except for instead of using multiply on just the shadow I made a new layer (underneath the layer with just the object), filled it with black, and used the original image inverted as a mask, ended up being indistinguishable from the original when used on a white background, with the bonus of being usable on any other background too.

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