The Stroke Layer Style lets you specifcy 'Inside,' 'Outside,' and 'Center' for alignment, unlike the Shape Layer Stroke. we need more information: show us a screenshot of the text layer in question. we need to examine the setup you got there to see how you can add the drop shadow after the fill and not before.

the result is that the fill colors the drop shadow as well. You can easily outline a raster layer since you can't put a Shape Layer stroke around it. my guess is that you are applying the drop shadow one render step before the color fill control. If you want to scale or rotate a layer with a shadow and have it look accurate, or as Adirai mentioned, use the Global Light property, then the Layer Style is best.Īnother Layer Style to look at is Stroke. Knowing both of these will help you to decide what's the best tool to use. However, if you scale or rotate the layer with the Layer Style on it you'll see the shadow reacts more naturally, as if there was actually a light cast on the layer creating a real shadow.īecause of the ease of access and flexibility, I would reccomend sticking with effects, but be aware of the different Layer Styles and understand how the rendering order affects these things. You can remove a Drop Shadow layer style from your current layer and have it appear on its own separate layer (so you can edit it on its own, erase parts of. This gives the effect of the colours in the image being mixed, and it’s very useful for colour correction too. Channel blur creates a blurring effect for the red, green, blue and alpha channels within a layer. If you scale or rotate the layer with the effect you'll see that the shadow is fixed to the layer, which isn't natural. Let us help by helping you get familiar with the five basic types of blur you can experiment with on After Effects 1. So it’s just a solid layer where it’s been changed, it says receive shadows only. So it’s transparent but it shows shadows, that’s how shadow catchers work. Right click on your shape layer, go to Layer Styles and select drop shadow. And the material option regarding shadows is that it receives shadows only. On a duplicate of that same layer add the Drop Shadow Layer Style. The shadow catcher is a solid layer that has material options because it’s in 3D. On a raster (non-vector) layer add a Drop Shadow effect. You only need to apply 3D Glasses to one layer in a composition. Aside from Photoshop compatibility, though, Layer Styles do present some benefits. The layer to use as the left or right view. Here’s the crazy workaround I currently have to keep it all within the Effects of one layer: Drop Shadow (set to Shadow Only) + Invert (Alpha) + CC Composite (Stencil Alpha) Then I add my Roughen edges and stylized effects. You can reorder them, mask them, and access them in the Effects Controls panel. Youll need to convert the drop shadow layer effect. Select Structure and Quality effects for your shadow. Perhaps the shadow should fall on the content of the layer immediately below, but not the layer below that. In general I stick with effects because overall there's more flexibility. Customize your drop shadow by using the Layer Style dialog box.

Layer drop shadow after effects