What is it with Drop Shadows?

[LadyJaine]

I regularly peek thought a couple of different galleries on forums dedicated to digiscrapping.

I'm seeing a lot of layouts with unrealistic drop shadowing. It's overdone, and it looks silly at times. I won't post a link to it, but I saw a layout with paper strips and squares layered under the photo. The layer on top of the stack had stitching on it. But with each layer shadowed to make it look like it was pop-dotted up, the layer with stitching made no sense. Who stitches down anything on top of a stack of pop dotted layers?

And that is just one example. Is anyone else seeing way too much drop shadow as a trend?

[pbp908]

What aggravates me is getting a digi kit or embellishments and they already have a drop shadow attached. Generally it's not the correct angle, spread or opacity for what I'm doing, and I have to try to cover it up somehow. I wish more designers would be aware of what they're doing and give us the option to have the shadow or not.

[jfugina]

Pam - have you subscribed to ScrapGirls yet? When they include clusters and frames and such, they usually include one with a shadow and one without. I generally like the shadowed stuff, and I don't find their shadows unreasonable. I also think they do a good job with stuff like lifted photos and things that are supposed to look just slightly curled at a corner. And when you buy a photo template (like a multi-frame kind of thing), they send a fully assembled png, as well as a folder with all of the individual pieces so that you can adjust shadows as you see fit. Not freebies, but when all of my other year-long subscriptions run out, they're the ones I'm going to keep paying for.

I agree that I might look at a layout with stitching on top of something heavily lifted as odd, though I may not immediately identify why it seems out of place without really studying it. I usually do a basic drop shadow, and then change the settings to 5,5,40 (don't even remember what the numbers are for, but it was what Jessica Sprague recommended), and then copy that layer style on to whatever other layers need a shadow. It seems to work well for stuff that's supposed to just be paper on top of paper.

[pbp908]

I adjust my shadows by the embellishment. Not much on photos and mats - just a thin line - and a bit more on things that appear to stand up more or need more height. I tend to use a bit of contouring on photos - they always seem to have a little sheen to them IRL, so I add that by using the contour option.

I haven't subscribed to Scrap Girls yet. I'm seeing so many things everywhere that I want and am adding more and more. DH is threatening another external just to hold the digi files.