Lee

Got an easy qustion here and for some reason I just can't seem to find a solution.

I have an image on my PS desktop. I go to Image>Canvas Size and make a series of canvas enlargements. The last one is a 20 pixel black border. So far, so good. Now, having a duplicate layer already established I go to the add layer style option at the bottom of the Layers window (I have already selected the black border using the Magic Wand). I select Bevel and Emboss from the menu and, voila, I get an embossed border.

Now here's my problem. Doing the same thing as above if I then select Drop Shadow I get nothing. Why does that work for one layer style and not the other?
Obviously I'm doing something wrong. Advise please.

As always, thanks in advance.

Lee

Bacardi

Whew...if I understand you correctly, I suppose you try to get a shadow within a completely black selection...

Photoshop is not a 3D app...so it won't shed light on an embossed frame and calculate a shadow falling from it on the pic...

What I would do is, with the selection active, create a new layer and fill the selection with black (or your colour). Then I would apply the Layer Style "Drop Shadow" to this layer (with only the frame on it)
This gives an "acceptable" shadow on the image...

Lee

Sorry, Eric. I guess I did not explain very well. I have all all white section with a 20 pixel black border. I wanted to put a drop shadow on the top and right inside edges of the border. I can do it by draging just the black border to a new window but that is a pain. What puzzles me is that new Layer Styles selected from the bottom of the Layers Window works for the Bevel and Emboss tool but not the drop shadow. Not sure why.

Does that clarify?

retired_paddza

Without seeing it, it's hard for me to visualize what you're talking about. Here's three scenarios I am getting from your description.

1. You have a solid filled layer with white and a black border on it. You applied the bevel and it worked because it's an edge effect. You applied a drop shadow and it didn't work because there are actual white pixels on the same layer and it's adding the shadow where there aren't pixels.

2. You have the black border below the white (or whatever it is) fill. The bevel worked because the black border is exposed, but the shadow is showing up under the other artwork.

3. You have toggled some bizzare combination of buttons you didn't mean to in your "advanced blending options" window of your layer effects, and have inadvertantly changed how the knockout is working. You can have layer styles clipped by transparency, layer masks, and vector masks. You can also have them knockout other layers as well as blend their effects in different orders. Any one of these might cause unexpected results if you hadn't built the file to take them into account and weren't prepared for them.

In any case, the best solution would be to make the 20px black border it's own layer on the top of the layer stack and then apply your layer effects to it.

If that doesn't help, all I can say is show us the problem because we're not getting it from a description.

Lee

Hey MB,

Thanks. You're first senero was the right one and something you said about filled with white pixels triggered it for me. I went back to PS , made another layer and deleted the white (inside the border). Then applied a drop shadow and it worked. Thank you, sir

Just for my own education, why did bevel and emboss work and not drop shadows on the second layer? Can't you put as many styles as you want on a layer even though that may not be the best thing to do?

Thanks MB

retired_paddza

Because bevel just affects the edges of an object. So until you made a bevel that was larger than the 20px border, you wouldn't notice that it wasn't affecting only the black border. Just an optical illustion basically. You expect it to make a bevel and it did, so you assumed that it was working how you wanted until you needed an effect that was being blocked by the white pixels. With some of the bizzarely complex layer sets I've built, I've done this to myself on occasion.

Rick

Seeing as we are talking about layer styles here, I have a question about drop shadows

If I add a drop shadow on one layer and then later add another drop shadow on a different layer, the shadow I applied to the first layer will change to match the shadow one the second layer.

Can I not apply a drop shadow on a layer without affecting the layers below? \:]

retired_paddza

Rick - You didn't mention how the shadows are being affected by each other, but I'm guessing you mean orientation and distance. That would be the classic confuser, "global light". If you have global light checked, it means that all layer styles try to match their light source to eachother. So if you have a bevel at 120degrees and then change the global light of a shadow, the bevel will change to match. This is intended to keep all of your lighting matched, but doesn't allow you to "misuse" layer effects to create special effects. The simple solution? Uncheck "global light" in your layers. They will now not affect each other when you change the settings. This must be done on a per layer basis. Layers want to stay on the global light, so you have to tell them not to be. The "use global light" checkbox is right next to wherever you set distances and orientations in each layer effect that uses it.

Hope that's what you needed.