Drop shadow on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
In
Generally,
drop-shadow() filter function, Mozilla Developer Network The first two are used for elements and text respectively, while the drop shadow filter additionally to the element's content, letting it support oddly shaped elements or transparent images.
Drop shadow definition
at About.com
How to Add a Realistic Drop Shadow?
in
graphic design
Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscip ...
and computer graphics
Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...
, a drop shadow is a visual effect consisting of a drawing element which looks like the shadow
A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two- dimensional silhouett ...
of an object, giving the impression that the object is raised above the objects behind it. The drop shadow is often used for elements of a graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...
such as window
A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mat ...
s or menu
In a restaurant, the menu is a list of food and beverages offered to customers and the prices. A menu may be à la carte – which presents a list of options from which customers choose – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-established seque ...
s, and for simple text. The text label for icon
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The mos ...
s on desktops in many desktop environment
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a grap ...
s has a drop shadow, as this effect effectively distinguishes the text from any colored background it may be in front of.
A simple way of drawing a drop shadow of a rectangular object is to draw a gray or black area underneath and offset from the object. In general, a drop shadow is a copy in black or gray of the object, drawn in a slightly different position. Realism may be increased by:
# Darkening the colors of the pixels where the shadow casts instead of making them gray. This can be done with alpha blending
In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pas ...
the shadow with the area it is cast on.
# Softening the edges of the shadow. This can be done by adding Gaussian blur
In image processing, a Gaussian blur (also known as Gaussian smoothing) is the result of blurring an image by a Gaussian function (named after mathematician and scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss).
It is a widely used effect in graphics software, ...
to the shadow's alpha channel before blending.
Inset drop shadows are a type which draws the shadows inside the element. This allows the interface element to appear as if it is sunken into the interface.
Use
Generally, window managers
A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunction ...
which are capable of compositing allow drop shadow effects, whereas incapable window managers do not. In some operating systems like macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
, drop shadow is used to differentiate between active and inactive windows.
Websites are able to use drop shadow effects through the CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
properties box shadow, text shadow, and filter. drop-shadow() filter function, Mozilla Developer Network The first two are used for elements and text respectively, while the drop shadow filter additionally to the element's content, letting it support oddly shaped elements or transparent images.
External links
Drop shadow definition
at About.com
How to Add a Realistic Drop Shadow?
in
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in rast ...
References