How to Make Realistic Shadows in Photoshop

Today we show you how to create photorealistic shadows in Photoshop! Learn to use the Brush Tool to pull colors from an object, and then paint in shadows that have true-to-life color and variation.
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[@BystanderPs]

You were born to do this 😍

[@Hot_Brass]

Thanks for all the great content Aaron!

[@JothyJohn]

As usual, fantastic course. Never thought about the color reflection vs just doing a greyscale shadow,... Thank you ..

[@carriehannigan6480]

Excellent information! It'll help me address my "something's not right" situations when compositing. Thanks!

[@traceychristie9509]

Wonderful tutorial, thank you so much for sharing!

[@justingordon2487]

Works really well when making content for products! Thank you

[@tee177]

I want to thank you for all your clear and easy-to-follow tutorials. Including teaching materials.

[@phlearn]

Thank you tee! Glad they've been helpful.

[@kreatorsparadise45]

You are such an awesome teacher... 🙏 God Bless

[@BystanderPs]

He was born to teach I guess 🤗

[@catalinsavulescu3071]

Great tutorial Mr. Nace aka "Pen tool guy" :)

[@rubencabango5120]

Thank you for such great tutorial!

[@jennygarcia5227]

You are the best teacher! And you are funny and kind! Adore you Aaron!! Thank you for all your videos!

[@praewphanolij5007]

Thank you so much to made all difficult works to be so easy. You are most excellent teacher I've found on KZbin. All the trick and tips are really work.

[@jennyhunt]

Shadows are hard! Thanks for the great instruction!

[@astridferguson3905]

Excellent, you are an excellent teacher.

[@emmanueedonu875]

This is exciting. Thanks a bunch

[@ThePhotoshopExpert-JM]

Great tutorial. I have always done it this way myself. I thought I was being original ;)

[@spexgck2478]

Amazing thank u

[@f0rshakengaming]

Thank you! You saved me some time at work

[@tomingrassiaimages8776]

Very well done Sir.

[@vishnumanoj2172]

Helpful 👌

[@jamesmethu4666]

Bruh, you are a genius, may you prosper at your work.

[@AryanSharma-gs4rv]

This channel makes awesome vidsos love it 😍

[@Liz-lw4mr]

Amazing tutorial

[@igorzhirov3675]

Thank you! I love you!

[@narenkramnad]

Wow... great

[@princessalysa9555]

Learned again from you!

[@kenfriberg8752]

I like to call them 1) grounding shadow - for the close to the object darker shadow and 2) the cast shadow for the shadow that defines the type and direction of the light.

[@SarahZAL94]

"Calm down your blur" I honestly laughed

[@chrinjapan7269]

thank you so much!

[@thebrowncrew]

thank you!

[@mireidy4288]

Incredible!!! Now I need to try it.

[@phlearn]

let us know how it goes!

[@jimbobaroobud]

Well, this is wonderful for round subjects. This process doesn’t look like it would work well on subjects that have a complicated outline (like humans waving or giraffes running). Can you please create a tutorial on these types of subjects when a single light source (like the sun) is in differing positions (in front of subject, behind the subject, to the side of the subject, low in sky, high in sky, etc.)?

[@phlearn]

Great idea. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@TheLibby2002]

Thinking the same thing

[@mckinnon421]

Nice!

[@vdo32]

Thank you.

[@TravelAlways316]

Literally could not stop laughing at calm down your blur. Just knowing I’m not the only one who talks to myself like that when I edit anything... key! 😂👏🏽

[@md.ahsunhabib1159]

thank you sir,,,,

[@ModernPindawale]

U r great 👍

[@zk1270]

thx!

[@AntonioTotaroGuitar]

i love this channel

[@xDaShaanx]

Wow 😁

[@zop_pigs7694]

amazing

[@vizzo7]

great video. and now how to make harsh shadows

[@sinscent5377]

can i know what type of brush did you used? because when i paint it , the shadow color looks darker.

[@kontectme]

After all this, duplicate soft shadow layer (which is in multiply mode), make new layer Overlay, control opacity of both layers. It gives more realistic and light effected shadow look on color backgrounds. (experiment switching Multiply and Overlay layers above and below)

[@cr2686]

Dear Aaron, when i export my composition the brush strokes become choppy and each shade separates from others making the shadow look choppy and unsmooth. How can i fix this?

[@chrislee2293]

Hey been watching your vids for a while now but how do you get your brush to be so soft. Even thought I have my hardness at 0%

[@sandrosimao]

Hello,try to play with the opacity and the flow

[@sebastianreiprich3747]

I always love Aarons shirts

[@grillodon]

Bravo.

[@maswidkrisnanto4116]

Dear Aaron, in minute 1:27 how we can take color sample in layer 1 and get the color of the pomegranate’s shadow (layer 0) ? I try do that and get no color because the selected layer is layer 1

[@listlessh]

This is really late, but you probably had the layer's mask selected. Masks are always grayscale, so color sampling with one selected returns only the converted gray value.

[@halokosovo1]

I did the same at my workplace and got fire because I took too long =)) honestly this is good but unless you'll go for a billboard or a massive print, people wouldn't see the differences if you just simply use a oval soft brush and did 1 layer of shadow

[@Liz-lw4mr]

But on the other side, paying attention to this kind of detail will improve your understanding of how light and shadows interacts.

[@b991228]

Doesn’t the pomegranate have a specular highlight from a angled forward light yet the shadow seems to be occurring from an angled backlight.

[@aldiyansah4988]

good

[@Daniwasinvented]

Totally unrelated, but how are you able to constantly keep good posture???

[@phlearn]

He's probably a robot who learned to simulate human emotion.

[@Daniwasinvented]

@@phlearn lol

[@Erickhetfield]

"this...piece of fruit". It took a while for Aaron to remember it's called a pomegranate. 😁

[@shkurdiuk]

great video. it was not enough just to add a little noise to the shadow

[@ChillVibesWM]

PiXimperfect white version :D

[@dioniskarcev3569]

i subscribed to you))

[@cyberstudio2954]

❤

[@ElvisTafaPhotography]

Shadows so perfect but why red shadow?

[@MattiaCeccopieri]

Maybe the color red is "casted" on the paper?

[@KaraMLawrence]

Bounce light is important - in your environment colours spill onto the adjacent surfaces (we learned this in 3D school to make more realistic lighting)

[@WishingOnMy]

He shows why at 11:55 also :)

[@xDaShaanx]

Shadows always have a color. It could be environmental one & object color as well. Black & grey shadows look very fake.

[@feddydjokoroeseno]

mantul

[@papipoopoo]

how did you make layer mask appear on the screen black and white

[@vladimirgardic4418]

Alt and click on mask that you want to see in black and white

[@papipoopoo]

@@vladimirgardic4418 thank you

[@liam3524]

if I was you I would just take the color black get it to like 26% opasatie and then I would change the brush downwards make it bigger and paint like 3 dots under the pomgrannade

[@akshaygupta5911]

Just clicl on the fx below ...there is option to creat shadow...no work at all

[@drumdalf]

You better calm down that blur before it gets out of hand haha :D

[@shermansher7336]

hi

[@stephenmutua9630]

When the student is ready the master will appear and say, Keep in mind, we are not using grayscale shadows here.

[@phlearn]

🤣🤣

[@howardlevine6980]

Making a shadow. Easier than eating a pomegranate

[@ck1425]

Look at that shirt

[@mavida2544]

the tutorial was good but the speaker was talking too fast, I'm a beginner at this stuff so I had to keep rewinding. It was like taking a tutorial from the flash

[@Hannah-wx7er]

you can slow down it in video settings, choose a slower playback speed : )

[@mavida2544]

@@Hannah-wx7er literally hadn't thought of that.

[@thephotoshopdude4016]

He didn't tell which brush to use 🙂

[@altar7885]

Oh no. Something's very wrong with your shirt collar. Now you have to redo this whole video.

[@MountainRat]

Dude.. that shirt and background.. what happened to you?