I use Peppermint's shadows, but at a different angle than most other people in Digi Land. I asked one of my very favorite scrappers what angle she shadowed at and then tweaked all of Peppermint's shadows for that angle + some changes for my personal taste.
and if you buy different and they have different angles, you can change the angles and save the actions to stay with that angle.
I am so bummed that I use PSP and can not use styles. Shadowing is something I have been working on for a long time and will continue to try to improve, but I am thinking those styles would be sweet!
I love the look of great shadowing, but don't really care to figure out how to tweak them on my own. So, another fan of Peppermint's styles here... I use them exclusively.
the way my shadow falls depends gratley on where I place my lighting effect on my background paper, if its near to the top of the page then my shadow will have a 58 degree angle, again if the lighting effect is near the bottom of the page then the angle will be opposite to where the light will be so will be more of a 9degree or a -30 angle, but its personal prefarance on how you like your shadows to look.
Cindy is one of my scrapping idols: She does her angles from the bottom up, so I've started doing my angles around -15 to -25. I love the way they look.
I used to do my shadows at -40 and I like the effect. But it doesn't usually match the highlights on epoxy/acrylic elements then and then those felt off when I looked at the page. And I love epoxy badges, so... If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
when i do tape i usually do a very low gausian blur (like maybe 3.5...sometimes less, depending on the color of the layers behind the tape), and then linear burn and a very low opacity... maybe around 30-40, again depending on the colors in the background. i play with it a bit until it looks right, but these are my starting points.
and like peppermint alluded to, my shadow angles usually are driven by the lighting on a certain element i'm using. if there's nothing specific to give it direction, then i move it down and to the left.
I love the effect of shadows on a page, more than styles, they impress me, I usually try shadows, tutorials, make my shadows ...I think some girls create their shadows as identity ...eg the shadows of mummyd reminds me of the works of Leonardo da Vinci with techniques with smoky shadows...
