How to create a shadow of a person in Affinity Photo?

[webuxer]

Hello,

 

I'm not sure if this is the right section of the forum to ask question of how to do certain things in Affinity Photo.

 

I need some help on how I can create shadow of a person. I cut a pasted a person in an image and would like to make it as real as possible, but I can't figure out how to add a shadow.

 

Thank you

[Sean P]

Hi webuxer,

I've moved your thread over to 'Questions' where you should be able to get a bit more help with your request! :)

[Richard S.]

webuxer,

This kind of question is hard to answer without seeing what you are trying to achieve.

 

To start with, you could try making a selection around the person, then putting a copy of the selection onto it's own new layer.

You could then fill in the selection with black / grey, then blur and feather the selection. You could then flip, shear, or reposition the shadow to how you want it, then lower the opacity to taste.

 

You also need to take into account that shadows often become distorted and change angle when they come into contact with other objects, so you need to be aware of this if you want it to look realistic.

Creating realistic shadows post process is relatively hard to achieve, so this is extremely basic guidance, and just something to get you started. Try it as an experiment, and see how you get on.

 

Hope this helps.

[Craig Ozancin]

Realistic shadow are fairly complex. This video by Aaron Nace of phlearn might help. You will need to translate it to Photo.

 

https://youtu.be/med_7bUSHpo

[sankos]

If you have a LinkedIn (Lynda.com) account -- trial will do as well -- there's a 5-min. basic tutorial on how to do this. You might be interested in the entire chapter 6, since it's about compositing in Affinity Photo.

[Raymondo]

If I read you right you are after creating a shadow of the whole person. If that's the case then create a copy of the cutout person and position underneath, go to fx and apply a colour overlay to black and apply a blur if needs be and position in place of your choosing. If you want to apply shadow along the ground then use transform to get the right angle and positioning. Hope this helps.

[Raymondo]

Forgot to say finish off by lowering opacity as needed.