User Guide

68 Corel Painter User Guide
Adding Drop Shadows
Adding shadows to a layer’s content can enhance the appearance of an image. You can
add a drop shadow to a single layer or to a group.
Drop shadows are also helpful for developing Image Hose nozzles. For more
information, refer to “Preparing Images” in the Help.
When you add a drop shadow, Corel Painter creates a new layer for the shadow and
groups it with the original. This enables you to select and modify the drop shadow
layer independently from the original layer.
To add a drop shadow
1 Select a layer or group.
2 Choose Effects menu > Objects > Create Drop Shadow.
3 In the Drop Shadow dialog box, type values in the following boxes:
• X-Offset and Y-Offset specify the distance, in pixels, from the center of the layer
image to the shadow.
• Opacity specifies the degree to which the shadow covers underlying images.
Setting Opacity to 100% obscures underlying images; lower values create a
more transparent shadow.
• Radius specifies the amount of blur at the edge of the shadow. The radius is half
the distance across the blurred region. If you set Radius to zero, you create a
sharp-edged shadow.
• Angle specifies the direction of the blur.
• Thinness specifies the amount of blur applied perpendicular to the Angle. If a
blur shows streaks, increase Thinness to soften it.
If you want to merge the drop shadow layer with the image layer, enable the
Collapse to One Layer check box.
Creating Patterns on Layers
You can use the same techniques to create patterns on layers as you do to create them
on the canvas. However, a pattern’s wrap-around features do not apply to layers. This
is because the canvas has edges, but layers do not — they are unlimited in size. If you
shift a pattern on a layer, the pattern does not wrap around. Refer to “Using Patterns”
on page 120 for more information.