Ooooo, Drop Shadows!

When I was learning how to create drop shadows, a friend of mine said to me, "once you figure them out, you'll be addicted!" Well, she was right! And drop shadows are SO EASY!

GIMP has two ways to create drop shadows that I like. You'll find them both in the same drop-down menu: "Script-fu". I have no idea what script-fu means, but there is a lot of cool stuff in there, drop shadows being one. (Now, if you don't see the script-fu drop down menu, you've got a little bit more learning to do. I'll get to you in a later post, since I'm on a roll right here with the shadows. ;) For now, try looking at a different GIMP window to see if that helps.)

Now I'm not going to get fancy and try to include screen shots so bear with me in the descriptions and please let me know if you need more help! Click on "Script-Fu" and then go down and click on "Shadow", then click on "Drop Shadow". GIMP has already entered some numbers for you which will be the degree of shadow and darkness of shadow that will appear on your layer. Did I forget to mention you need to choose a layer you want a shadow on? Well, click cancel on the drop-shadow window and go back and do that. We'll wait for you!

So you've got your layer highlighted in the layers dialogue, and you're back on the drop-shadow option. No click..... "OK"! Wasn't that easy? Really--it's THAT easy! What you just did was create a new layer (take a peek in your layers dialogue!) that is JUST shadow. If you don't believe me, try this: see the little eye next to each layer? Click on the eye next to the layer that the shadow is behind. Now look at your layout. You should just see that shadow! Now click on the eye again and your layer will be back. Now try drop shadows on text, photos, ribbons, etc--your layouts are going to POP!

I'll go into more detail with drop-shadows in another post. I'll also show you another way to create drop shadows. For now, have fun scrapping! ~Jen