Beginner's Guide to Adobe Flash/Filters and Blend Modes/Dimensional Shadows

One limitation of the new Drop shadow filter is that it does not have a built-in skew setting. The workaround for creating a drop-shadow with more depth illustrates how you can use the Hide object option and the Transform panel to enhance shadows created with the Drop shadow filter. Here are the steps:

1. Place a Text fjeld, Movie Clip, or Button instance on the Stage.

2. Create a new layer below the original content layer: Click the Insert Layer icon in the Timeline (or choose Insert ~ Timeline ~ Layer from the application menu). Drag the new layer to reorder it below the original layer in the layer stack.

3. Copy the item from Step 1 to the new layer: Select the keyframe where the item exists and hold the Option key while dragging the keyframe content to the new layer, or select the item and use the copy command (Ctrl+C or W+Con Mac), then activate the new layer and use the Paste in Place command (Shift+Ctrl+V or Shift+W+Von Mac).

4. Lock the original content layer.

5. Select the duplicate item on the lower layer and use the Transform panel to apply a Horizontal stretch and skew.

6. Open the Filters panel or activate the Filters tab in the Property inspector.

7. Click the plus symbol and select Drop shadow from the filters list. In the Drop shadow settings, select the Hide object check box. Otherwise, the default settings are a good place to start.

8. The default settings can be modified to create a softer shadow. As an example, the shadow Color can be changed to medium gray (#666666), the Strength can be set to 50 percent, and the Quality can be set to Medium.