100 Styles 16 - Shadowy Creatures - Shadowy Creature

Shadowy creature effect (Click the image to see it bigger)

This weeks theme is called "Shadowy Creatures", and will feature just that, or at least something vaguely related. (It's more likely that there will be a shadow related effect without a creature than a creature without a shadow though. So, a focus on shadow effects in other words.) To start off the week I've taken the theme quite literally and created a shadowy creature: a creature made of a shadow. Read on for info on the effect, and to download the style to play around with yourself.

Shadowy Creature effect

 Blending Options settings (Click to see the image bigger)

This effect starts with the Blending Options: like yesterdays effect it relies on the Fill Opacity being zero.

Drop shadow settings

There's really only one setting that's important here: The Layer Knocks Out Drop Shadow checkbox. If it's checked the result is that the shape of the object/text/non-transparent pixels is "knocked out" of the Drop Shadow, resulting in big holes in it. In other cases that can be useful, but in this case it is the overall shape of the Drop Shadow we're interested in, and not some holes in the middle. Apart from that it's just to fiddle with the settings until the result is pleasing, one note though: in contrast to most cases where one wants to make the Opacity etc low to avoid an overwhelming effect, this time the effect should be fairly strong as the object should be visible. Then again, a more subtle effect can be nice as well.

--> Click here to download the style <--