Tips and Tricks ~ Using Inner Shadows to Cut Out Shapes

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Happy Wednesday everyone!  This is Kim here today to share a shadowing trick I love.  Back when the Shabby Team did this post looking back at some of our first digital layouts, a common theme was that we all wished we had known more about shadows when we started.  It got me thinking about where I am with using shadows and I’ve been attempting to learn even more about them and think more about making the shadows in my layouts more realistic.  Along the way I’ve found a few tricks that I love to use, and I hope you’ll enjoy looking at one of them in this post today.  It’s really quick and easy – YAY!

First of all, let’s take a look at a layout I made for this post today.

I see a lot of layouts right now that use the technique of “cutting out” papers to show another paper layer underneath.  In this layout, I created a wheel shape and wanted that to be cut out to show the red layer underneath.  Now, I could have actually cut it out of the top layers (something we’ll not cover in this post), but I would have had to cut through several layers.  Sometimes it can be a bit tricky to get everything lined up just right on a cut out like this.  So what’s the trick??  An inner shadow.  Here’s how you can use an inner shadow to give the effect that a shape is cut out.  (Please note that I’m using Photoshop CS5 and it’s possible that your version could use a different menu or shortcut to get to these options.)

• Step 1: Create the shape that you want to “cut out”.
• Step 2: Open up the blending options for the shape’s layer (I double click on the layer in my layers palette).
• Step 3: Create an inner shadow.  As with all shadowing, you can change the settings to get the look you are going for.  Try different blend modes, opacities, angles, sizes, etc.  For the inner shadow in my layout, I used the settings shown below.  (As a side note, I’ve recently started using the blend mode “linear burn” for many of my shadows.  I like the look better in most cases. )

• Step 4: Bring in the background paper you would like to show under your cut out.  Clip it to your shape.  (Layer -> Create Clipping Mask or  Ctrl-Alt-G)

All done!  Your shape now looks like it is cut out, but it actually isn’t.  One of the things I love about this trick is that as I work more on the layout, I can still move the cut out shape around or resize as I need.  The shape has not been merged with any other layers.  How many times have I created a cut out, merged it, then wished I could move it later??  Many times – lol!

I thought I would also share a recent layout I posted in the gallery that uses this technique as well (might as well give a little more inspiration while we’re talking about it!)  This layout was inspired by Beckie’s rainbow post.  In this layout, the dotted papers all look like they are under the squares of the kraft paper.  But they’re not!  I created this layout with a series of squares layered on top of each other.  It is just that the squares that have the dotted paper have an inner shadow on them that makes them look cut out from the kraft paper squares around them.

Using inner shadows really is an easy way to get a cool cut out effect.  Hope you give it a try sometime!  And be sure to stop by tomorrow as SP is going to check in with us on Project Scrap 2012.  I’m sure there will be lots of great inspiration for those September pages!!  Bye bye!

KimTips and Tricks, Uncategorized 9 Comments