SHADOWS?

Jill

Sugar Cookie : GingerScraps Praise Team
Shadows? I have purchased a couple of templates here instore and downloaded some more from the template challenges and WW. Some of the templates have no shadows, some have 120degree shadows and some have 45degree shadows. Is this a personal preference by the designer or other factor? I have always used 120degree shadows across the board, I know that some people match the shadow to the angle of the sun in the photo but I have never worried about that. What do you do? When using a shadowed template and working on, for instance, a button layer, do you copy and paste the given shadow to your button element layer, do you drag the given shadow up to your layer, or do you create your own shadow? I would be interested to hear what preferences everyone has.
 
For me it's a personal preference. I change the shadows on templates to how I like them - angles, distance, blur, etc. I start with 120 for the angle but I change it depending on how the larger elements on my page look; i.e. I might want the angle to be a certain way in order to define the elements more... I'm not good at explaining what I'm thinking! LOL - say I have a lot of elements along one side and the 120 angle doesn't define them but a 45 angle does, so I change all the elements and papers to that angle.
 
I have a shadow action set that I love using, so I usually adjust pre done templates. I've tweaked them to how I like them. I don't usually prefer a ton of shadow and I don't like the floating on the page look, so I usually do subtle shadowing..usually 45.
 
Yeah its a personal preference! :) We keep ours in the templates - mainly because it makes the previews look better, and as long as we put them in for previews, we might as well leave them in to make it easier for those who want to use them! :D
 
I generally (almost always) use a 120 angle and then 18, 11, and 45% opacity. Smaller elements will have less shadow. When I paper scrapped I loved using the pop up sticky things (can't think of what they are really called anymore) that gave dimension to a page. I used them on almost everything. Now when people look at my printed books they literally have to feel the page because it looks like it's really standing off the page. That's a great compliment to me and why I generally don't change my shadowing much at all. If there are a lot of elements on one side of the page and the 120 angle doesn't provide enough dimension, I will switch it to 45. The angle MUST stay the same for everything on the page (my preference) because that's how it looks realistic to me.
 
As someone that uses Storybook Creator and a converter for .page templates, usually the .pages come unshadowed.

My programs uses a different angle - I use a 135 angle most times - which is 45 to most of you. Then I change the depth, softness, etc. There are no actions, but shadowing is pretty simple in my program.
 
When I use a template, I usually keep the shadowing on the paper pieces and just clip my paper to those. My elements, however, either get a custom shadow or a preset style.
 
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