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312 Chapter 3 Basic Compositing
To increase or decrease a drop shadow’s blur:
1 Click and hold the Select/Transform tool, then choose the Adjust Drop Shadow tool
from the pop-up menu.
2 In the Canvas, drag one of the four corner handles in to decrease a shadow’s blur or out
to increase it.
To move an object’s drop shadow:
1 Click and hold the Select/Transform tool, then choose the Adjust Drop Shadow tool
from the pop-up menu.
2 Drag anywhere within the shadow’s bounding box to move it around.
Drop Shadow Parameters in the Properties Tab
In addition to the Canvas and HUD drop shadow controls, each object has individual
drop shadow parameters in the Properties tab.
Use the checkbox to toggle any object’s drop shadow on or off.
Color: Sets the drop shadow’s color. This color is black, by default.
Opacity: Sets the drop shadow’s transparency.
Blur: Specifies how soft the drop shadow is.
Distance: Sets how close or far an object’s drop shadow is to the object. The farther
away a drop shadow is, the more distance there appears to be between the object and
anything behind it in the composition.
Angle: Lets you change the direction the drop shadow falls along. Changing the Angle
of the drop shadow changes the apparent direction of the light casting the shadow.
Retiming
Your motion graphics projects may require you to perform special timing tricks on
media: speeding a clip up, slowing it down, or playing it back at a variety of speeds.
Using Retiming Behaviors
The Retiming category of behaviors offers various ways to quickly execute the most
commonly applied retiming tasks. A hold frame or strobe is easily accomplished with
a retiming behavior. Take some time to look over the behaviors in the Retiming
category before spending a lot of time in the Inspector creating your own custom
retiming from scratch. For more information on Retiming behaviors, see “Retiming
Behaviors” on page 453.