Adding the Shadow to the Post Below

I promised to tell how I added the shadow to the post just below this one after moving the figure to make her apparently closer to the viewer. She was moved down and made larger, and she was removed from her original position. Now I added the shadow.

The finished photo to the right has the shadow added but how do you create a shadow? You know that the shadow is the shape of the figure casting the shadow and if we click on the eye of the Background layer (in the Layer pallet on screen right) all we have left is the figure as seen below. While your at it click to the right of the eye to be sure that layer is active.

Create a copy of this layer by pressing [Ctrl J], then while holding the [Ctrl] key down click on the tiny thumbnail of the figure in the layer pallet and it automatically selects just the figure and does it perfectly. Look near the bottom of the tool bar and you should see two overlapping small squares. The one on top should be black and the bottom one white. These represent the Foreground and Background colors and if they are not black and white just type the letter "d" and it will reset the colors to the default (B&W). Looking back at the image which is selected the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl Backspace] will fill the selected area with the foreground color, black, and you now have a shadow that looks like the subject. Of course it's currently on top of the subject and not on the ground where it belongs. Remember, last time, I used [Ctrl T] to call up the Free Transform function which allowed me to move my figure and re-size her. Here I do it again and this time I click on the top center handle (in the rectangle which appears) and drag it straight down and off the edge of the image until my "shadow" looks about like I imagine it.

Just two little details to complete the image. While were looking at just the shadow select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and drag the Radius slider to about 10. Our shadow is now a little soft on the edges just like a real shadow would be.

Shadows are not black they are the color of whatever they fall on, just darker.  Over in the layer pallet bring back the eyes of the Background layer and the layer of our figure, then be sure that the shadow layer is still selected and at the top of the layer pallet find the word Opacity. Next to it will be 100%, change it to about 50% and you will be done.

OK two more really tiny things for closing in on perfection. The shadow will be at the top of the layer pallet. Click just past the name of the layer and drag it down below the layer that contains the figure. Now click on the figure layer and, using the Move Tool, drag the figure down just a little so it's on top of the end of the shadow just as is would be in real life.

I hope you've learned something here. Please let me know. Oh and here is a new final image that was created as I type the instructions above.